AMtech

1/72 EC-135N/E ARIA/ALOTS  "Snoopy" model kit

Product # 729202

Product Article by Steve Bamford on Aug 13 2003

 

 

 

This kit from AMtech is of the 1/72 EC-135N/E ARIA/ALOTS  "Snoopy".  This kit is a "next step" in the AMT/ERTL KC-135 family of kits.  It includes sprues of light gray styrene, one of clear styrene parts and decals to make one of four different EC-135's.

The EC-135 housed the largest airborne parabolic dish antenna (7 feet or over 2 meters in diameter).  The initial purpose of these aircraft was to track returning Apollo spacecraft and later the EC-135's were used for tracking a variety of airborne items.  Their contribution made possible the development of systems like Apollo, Space Shuttle, Magellan, Tomahawk, Cruise Missile, Trident, Pershing and Peacekeeper programs.

The first thing I always consider when buying a kit is quality of the moulding.  This kit has delicate recessed panel lines.  
This kit has a slightly unique way of installing the wings.  The wings don't have the standard tabs that you'd stick into the fuselage.  Instead this kit has a bottom section for the center of the wings.  The top of each the wing is full size.....but the bottom of the wing is just the outer 2/3's of the wing.  This design permits an incredibly thin wing due to the added support of the center wing lower section....but you can get wing droop over time.  A reinforcement technique is covered in the instructions
that will solve this problem.  The added fix includes gluing a bit of sheet styrene to reinforce the inside of the wing.  I see no drawbacks to this design if you include the sheet styrene to reinforce the wing.

The interior is another area that always fascinates me.  This kit has a very detailed way of doing the cockpit overhead console.  It is molded to the cockpit windscreen and then a grey styrene part goes on the outside of the overhead console area.  You can now detail this console on the inside and the clear styrene means you can detail the gauges from the backside/topside of the overhead console giving you some very good paint and detailing options that will preserve the "glass" of the analog gauges in this overhead console.  This is certainly creative in design for this kit.

The cockpit parts are either very good or downright stunning.  The seats I would call very good.  They are a bit on the plain side but quite good considering some I've seen in 1/72.  
Some seatbelts would help here.  The instrument panel is a delicate work of art....beautiful detail abounds.  Drybrushing would bring this instrument panel to life.  Or you could use the second instrument panel that is included and has no raised detail and install the instrument panel decal included in the kit.   

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Other interior detail is very well done and full of delicate detail.

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The wheels and landing gear are also full of very crisp detail.  The inside of the main gear well has added detail to permit the modeller to detail this area as well with very little effort.  Some detail painting and a wash should do the trick very nicely here.   

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Check out the detail on these main gear doors.  Beautiful stuff. 

There is also 4 light grey resin pieces included in the kit.  These are for the EC-135N/E TACSAT, Fuel Dump and ALOTS pod and are flawlessly molded.  Complete installation instructions for these resin parts are included in the kit.

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Main Gear doors

Resin Pieces

There  is also the option to use either the J-57 Turbojet or the TF-33 Turbofan engines.

The decals included in the kit are thin and will conform well.  They are also clearly printed and in register.  The decal options are for 4 different aircraft.  You have a choice between 2 aircraft painted aluminum paint and white or two aircraft painted light grey and white.  These four paint schemes are different but very similar from a distance.  

They include aircraft from 

  1. 4556th Test group, AF Eastern Test Range Patrick AFB Florida 1970 

  2. 4950thTest Wing, Aeronautical Systems Division Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 1971

  3. 4950thTest Wing, Aeronautical Systems Division Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 1977

  4. 4950thTest Wing, Aeronautical Systems Division Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 1977

Decal option #4 includes nose art of an EC-135 with Talons extended in full attack mode.  Remember this is 1/72 and this decal is the size of my thumbnail and as you can see by the blown up scan to the right....this decal sheet is of a very high quality. 

The main instruction booklet includes 8 pages of instructions.  Line drawings are clearly laid out and include painting instructions.  Also included is a two page addendum with pictures of instructions explaining how to strengthen the wings.  As well as a 4 page addendum with pictures of instructions explaining how to install the resin parts.  Also included is a 12 page booklet telling the history, specs and other info about this aircraft and includes the decal instructions for the 4 aircraft included on the decal sheet.

AMtech has impressed me with their actions of being a model company that stands behind their very fine line of models and they put a very high priority on customer service.  They are also very much focused on the serious modeller and they seem to go out of their way to provide extra info in their instruction sheets to make the model building process easier and more pleasant.  

This is a very nice kit and will build up to a very impressive model of the 1/72 EC-135N/E.

I'd like to thank AMtech for the review sample.

Steve Bamford

Photos and text © by Steve Bamford