Hobbycraft EF-111 (1/48)

[Josh1971]

Should I take that as a bad sign?

Anyone have any experience/thoughts/feelings on this kit?

JB

[jefropas]

Josh,

Only game in town, not bad, not great, needs work, I quit on mine. Went with the 72nd one by Hasegawa, I think it looks better. HTH.

Jeff

[toadwbg]

I had one of the other boxings, the F-111E I think.

In short, this kit is a big turd of plastic.

Soft detail, few options, weapons look like plastic turds, foggy canopy, cockpit looks "melted" out of the box.

Although I havn't fondled the Academy kit's plastic, I hear it is better. But really there is no great kit of the F-111 in 1/48th. I built the old Monogram kit decades ago. It's weak also.

I know Hasegawa makes a great 1/72 kit.

[Josh1971]

Thanks guys. I have built the Monogram Vark, and I have an Academy F-111E, as well as a 1/72 Hasegawa F-111C and some 1/72 Ertl stuff (Incl. one with a GBU-28!) but someone proposed this as a possible trade, and I saw one built up that looked really good.

Trying to decide if it's worth it. I don't have an EF-111, so I'm tempted.

JB

[BjornB17]

Having owned both the 1/48 Hobbcraft version and the 1/48 Academy version, the academy is 100 times better. I bought the hobbycraft version for $20 and it was a piece of junk, lots of mold defects, panel lines not full formed, panel lines that were like canyons, etc... It was so bad, that it was the only kit that i returned to the store for a refund. I then bought the academy version and look forward to building it!

[Josh1971]

Well, that pretty much solves it for me. I haven't heard one good thing about the Hobbycraft version of the EF-111, so I guess it's not a very good trade idea.

JB

[klawrence]

My advice is buy the Academy kit and save a bunch of paychecks to buy the Scaledown resin accessories. I have not built mine but I have them in my stash to be built. The completed ones that I have seen are beautiful birds and beat the OOB Academy kits hands down. We will never see Hasegawa or Tamiya do a really good 1/48 F-111 so you will have to go the resin route to bet an accurate one.

[Josh1971]

I'm not so worried about accuracy as I am fit, detail, and fun. It's not going in a museum and very few people other than me will ever see it.

Still, I don't like feeling like I'm going to burst a vein in my temple just from working on a model kit.

JB

[Frank Visser]

JB

Building a F-111 from academy right now and the only thing that I added was the pit from verlinden.

Pit that comes with the kit is just basic.

With the windows open, it is empty over there.

I thought that the EF version had a solid canopy, but mine the -F version had seperat windows.

I think that only the tail is differnt.

Just want it built for the fun of it, no pricewinner.

Then there is the matter of the moveable wings, never liked those options.

There is always a gap somewhere.

Solutions are given by modellers on the net.

Best thing is to make something of a curtain by yourself wich is not to difficult.

engravings are not everywhere as clear en nice, but can also be fixed by yourself.

Butt hell it is the only one in the 1/48 scale.

Perhaps in the future, trumpeter is getting it busy to do all the things that we want.

Below there are some pics of mine WIP.

Edited October 21, 2007 by Frank Visser

[kenlilly106]

My understanding is that the Hobbycraft kit is a copy of Academy kit, apparently both model companies used the same company for the tooling and that company was copying kits.

From what I understand the HC kit is better than the Zhengdefu (Chinese word meaning 'does not fit' ) kit, which I believe is a poor copy of the Academy kit.

Probably the biggest problem with this kit is the seam between the forward fuselage and the main body, the forward fuselage is split left/right, while the main body is split top/bottom. There's a lot of flex in this area that is compounded due to the front and rear parts having a height difference of at least 1/16".

Best idea I saw was to take the triangular linkage for the wings and use it to prop up the main fuselage at the joint, this will help take care of the step and add some needed bracing at the spot.

Ken

[Dave Williams]

I had heard that the HC F-111s were reboxes of the poor copy Zhengdefu kits.

You can read about the Zhengdefu kits here:

http://www.f-111.net/models/zhengdefu.htm

[Pete]

JB

Building a F-111 from academy right now and the only thing that I added was the pit from verlinden.

Pit that comes with the kit is just basic.

With the windows open, it is empty over there.

I thought that the EF version had a solid canopy, but mine the -F version had seperat windows.

I think that only the tail is differnt.

Just want it built for the fun of it, no pricewinner.

Then there is the matter of the moveable wings, never liked those options.

There is always a gap somewhere.

Solutions are given by modellers on the net.

Best thing is to make something of a curtain by yourself wich is not to difficult.

engravings are not everywhere as clear en nice, but can also be fixed by yourself.

Butt hell it is the only one in the 1/48 scale.

Perhaps in the future, trumpeter is getting it busy to do all the things that we want.

Below there are some pics of mine WIP.

Frank,

I've been following your 'Vark at Modelbrouwers as well. I must say I truly love the paint work you've done, but I'm a bit confused. The decals you are using are for a FB-111a, yet the upper camouflage is for all the other versions except the EF-111a. The light color on the underside is correct for a FB-111, but for the rest this should be black.

Other than that, it looks amazing and I wish I could airbrush like that one day!