This model was built straight out of
the box and sadly required lots of effort to make it look half decent. At
first glance, the kit looked quite impressive judging by the packaging art and
the multi-angle pictures on the side of the box. Being a fan of Academy
kits, I was quite excited when I purchased this kit as I’ve always wanted a
48th scale Tomcat. When the large parts were closely examined, for e.g. the
fuselage, wings and nose, the panel lines were either very faint or missing and
very inaccurate. Well, this can be fixed with a scriber of course but wait,
there were more problems encountered during assembly.
The entire cockpit and forward fuselage construction was poorly design to start
off with. When the cockpit was fitted through the bottom part of the
forward fuselage, I knew something wasn’t quite right. The entire
cockpit sits about 5mm too low into the fuselage and both the instrument panels
don’t quite fit to the dash. The instrument panels had to be filed into shape
to fit under the dash and the ejection seats had to be raised an extra 5mm or
so. The dashes also required filing as they hang way over the instrument panels.
Furthermore, there were gaps everywhere between the top and bottom half of
the forward fuselage. A lot of sanding had to be done but still not a 100%
perfect fit like the pictures on the box.
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The canopy frame outline was hardly visible
and I had to put the ole scriber into use again. The main landing
gear struts sit too far out from the fuselage and the wheel wells also
lack detail. The clear plastic landing light on the nose landing gear is
also way too small.
Ok, enough bitching for now. Let’s start with the cockpit, I’ve
added extra seat belts made out of plastic bits, additional ejection seat
handles at the front of both seats, a throttle lever on the pilot’s left
side and a heads up display projection glass piece on the pilot’s dash.
I also had to remove the incorrect positioning of what seemed to be
braided hoses at the top of the ejection seats and replaced them with thin
lock-wire instead. Heating tubes were also included inside the canopy made
out of plastic sprues and aluminium tape. The canopy actuator behind the
co-pilot’s seat is also an add-on.
The inclusion of the open radome to
display the radar is a nice option. I added some thin wire on the bulk
head to resemble electronic cables and a support bar to hold the radome up in
position.
Extra hydraulic lines were added to all the landing gears and additional hoses
and cables all made from thin aluminium wire were also included in the main gear
wheel wells. I used aluminium tape for the strut’s chrome bits and
the indexer box on the nose gear was also detailed with the appropriate colours.
Almost all the panel lines had to be rescribed and were washed with diluted
black acrylic paint and then wiped off with cotton buds and tissues lightly
soaked in diluted methylated spirit.
The only thing worth mentioning about this kit is the weapon stores. There
are a few weapon combos to play around with and the parts are actually quite
detailed and come with a nice set of decals.
All I can say is that this is the most “challenging” kit I have ever built.
Despite all the tantrums and time spent on its construction, I’m
actually quite impressed with its final outcome considering that it was a fairly
cheap model. My only regret was that I should’ve read the kit reviews
first before making the purchase.
Jason Foo
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