OH DEAR OH DEAR OH DEAR
I fully accept that I’ve been
spoilt recently with the gorgeous
Zoukei-Mura Phantom and the
stunning Su-33 from Kinetic. But
when I offered up the two fuselage
halves of this kit, it’s as if someone
polished half of one side of the
mould, someone else polished
the other side, and neither of
them bothered to check the panel
lines. OK, most line up but there
are enough that don’t and some
of them look like they’ve been
badly redone. And the rivets!
Call me old fashioned (you’re
old fashioned - Ed), but I like my
rows of rivets straight, please (most
are, but a few aren’t). And having
the rivets on the same side of the
panel line would be nice too. On
one fuselage half, some of them
are on one side of a panel line, but
on the other half they’re on the
other, and to make it worse they are
simply crude indentations – give
me the mad Trumpeter riveter
please, at least his are sharp!
There are also a number of
squares moulded on each side,
with diagonal lines on them that
represent panels with vents in
them. Every one I compared with
the pictures I took have the lines
going the wrong way (kit has them
top right to bottom left, the realthing is top left to bottom right).
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. This all
requires some serious remedial
work that you really should not have
to even think about on a new kit.
Trying to be nice to Italeri, it’s
probably worth noting that I’m
basing many of my comments
on a museum example. And
we know they’re not always
trustworthy. And that there
are variations across operators
and time which are very hard to
capture (more on THAT soon!).
So, having reflected for a while I
looked at the Eduard set to see what
we had to work with. There are a lot
of bits, starting with the window
surrounds. The kit representations
aren’t that bad; they’re a bit heavy
(like most of the strengthening
plates, for which the Eduard sets
are a must), but I think you could
get away with them. However, as
the fuselage needed some seriouspolishing anyway I figured they
might as well go, and the Eduard
ones do look more the part.
So I sanded them off, polished
the fuselage halves (probably not
enough, but this really shouldn’t
be needed at all), dug out my Rosie
the Riveter tools and some Dymo
name badge tape, and added a
row of rivets on the other side of
the window from the kit ones.
I had given up at this stage on
the idea of filling the panel line and
rivets (there’s only so much I’m
willing to do) and wondered about
adding more rivets. From just doing
the few lines, using the Dymo tape
as a guide, it was clear that I wasn’t
going to add every row of rivets in
that fashion, so I freehanded some
rivet lines down the fuselage sides
and some on the rear and figured
I might add some more as and
when (or if) the mood took me.
I then added the windowsurrounds, some vent panels (all
of which correct the kit errors),
strengthening plates, hatches,
etc, etc (there are, as I said, a lot
of parts!), and my model was
really looking quite good.
So back to Stage 6. There was a
little bit more flash where the grills
would fit that needed cleaning,
but as I had the Eduard set I used
them instead of the Italeri offering.
The Eduard grilles are intended
to be fitted on the outside but I
decided to leave them for now, as
I was worried that paint would
go through these and spoil the
engine area. I therefore decided
that I would mask the hole and
paint and fit the panels later.
There’s also a very annoying
instruction to open a hole in
the fuselage side near the front
door with the helpful comment
“Alternative”. This hole appears to
be for a mount point for the winch24 • JUNE 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
022-27-FEAT-Banana-0618.indd 24 11/05/2018 15:50