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On initial inspection, this kit
presents as a fairly typical limited run offering. It consists
of 21 injection molded parts, a pair of vacuformed windscreens,
and a small photoetch sheet containing shoulder harnesses, lap
belts, side consoles boxes, rudder pedals, etc. Decals for two
aircraft are offered: one a Norwegian, and the other American.
The engraved detail on the fuselage and wings is quite nice,
with appropriately scaled recessed panel lines and subtle fabric
effect on the fuselage. Unfortunately, it is easily obliterated
with any needed sanding and a couple of coats of paint. There is
also some lightly molded ribbing in the fuselage sidewalls. The
sprue attachments are rather large and there is quite a bit of
excess flash which must be cleaned up, particularly on the
smaller pieces.
The instruction sheet effectively
uses drawings to walk you through the building process. There
are also color callouts using Humbrol paints. In some cases
color names and FS numbers are provided as well.
Construction began with the
cockpit. Although there are relative few pieces, care must be
taken to position the seats properly on the floorboard, so that
the seats will be directly beneath the cockpit openings when
piece #7, the upper fuselage decking, is cemented onto the
fuselage (there are no clear attachment points for the seats).
There were fit problems that had to be overcome. The bulkhead
immediately behind the rear seat did not fit properly, leaving a
large gap at the top where it was supposed to meet the spine of
the fuselage. This piece was discarded and a replacement made
from styrene sheet. The instrument panels did not fit, being too
wide, and were trimmed down to the correct size on each side.
Little detail is lost in this process, since there is very
little detail to begin with! The cockpit was enclosed in the
fuselage halves, and the fuselage upper decking was cemented
into place.
The next task was to cement the
wings. Each wing is a single piece- no wing halves to glue
together. The wings butt join against the fuselage. I had hoped
to be able to paint wings and fuselage separately and then glue
them together, since they are different colors. However, the fit
was too poor to allow that. I found that despite my attempts to
shape the pieces so that they went together well, the fuselage
wing joint left a gaping crevice along the top. After joining
each wing to the fuselage with slow setting superglue gel and
setting what appeared to be the correct dihedral, I filled these
gaps with thick liquid superglue, followed by a coat of Tamiya
putty, followed by several coats of White Out, allowing for
drying and sanding time at each stage. Unfortunately, all the
necessary sanding obliterated most of the engraved panel lines
on the underside of the fuselage. These lines were rescribed
using the drawing on the instruction sheet as a guide. A further
complication is that the underside wing-fuselage join is not
along an actual panel line, and needed to be hidden. Multiple
applications of Mr. Surfacer 500 followed by sanding were needed
to even this up. The result was presentable but not perfect. The
nosepiece which fits over the engine was attached. It fit well
and no sanding was needed. The molded in "engine" is
devoid of any detail, but fortunately it is mostly hidden once
the nosepiece is fitted into place.
A primer coat of Mr. Gunze 1000
thinned with lacquer thinner was airbrushed on the model. The
airbrushed Mr. Thinner left very fine web-like strands deposited
on the edges of the aircraft and on everything else in my spray
booth- sort of a cotton candy effect. In retrospect, I think
that I had not thinned the Mr. Surfacer down enough. Thinning it
50% with lacquer thinner and airbrushing mutiple light coats at
12-15 psi seemed to do the trick. After the Mr. Surfacer was
dry, I sanded the model with wet 2000 grit paper. Next Tamiya
Lemon yellow was mixed with a very small amount of Tamiya red to
create what looked like a pretty good representation of chrome
yellow. As anyone who has ever airbrushed yellow will tell you,
this color covers very poorly, especially if the underlying
surface is not perfectly uniform in color. I found this to be a
problem when I airbrushed over areas of the wings where I had
previously sanded through the primer, leaving the much darker
gray color of the plastic exposed. These areas required MANY
coats of yellow to eventually present an evenly covered
appearance. Before painting the tail yellow, I re-airbrushed
this with Mr. Surfacer, leaving a uniform gray color. This was
much easier to cover when it was time to apply the chrome yellow
(I have found that an undercoat of silver gives the best base
for yellow). The wings and tail surface were masked with a
combination of Parafilm and Tamiya masking tape and a custom mix
of blue (Tamiya X4 blue, lighted with Tamiya gloss white) was
airbrushed on. To my eye, this appeared close enough to the blue
color in the boxart. The horizontal stabilizers were painted
separately (yellow) to make masking the tail easier. Once the
masking was removed, lines for the control surfaces were
accented with a wash of artist's watercolor thinner with Windex.
This was allowed to dry and then wiped off with a slightly
moistened fingertip!
Having chosen the American
scheme, decals were applied next. The decals, made for MPM by
Propagteam, were in register and showed good strong colors. I
did notice that the red/white horizontal stripes decal for the
tail was really alternating red and clear, necessitation that
the underlying area on the tail receive an airbrushed coat of
white. The decals responded well to a coat of Microsol to settle
them down. I elected not to use Solvaset, as the decals are
quite thin and I was concerned about their possible reaction to
this strong decal solvent. The only negative about these decals
is that once they are in place they tend to stick and are
difficult to reposition. I found the best way to reposition them
was to wet a small flat bristle brush down good with water and
then gently work it around the edge of the decal until I could
slide it underneath.
Vacuformed windscreens were cut
from their sheet with a new #11 blade, trimmed up, masked with
Parafilm and airbrushed blue. They were then attached initially
with small drops of thick superglue. After this was dry, gaps
were filled in using Kristal Kleer diluted with with water and
carefully placed with a small brush. Once this was dry, excess
was wiped away with a moistened Q-tip.
The instructions indicated that
the propeller should be "wood" color, so I airbrushed
a coat of Tamiya "flat earth" (XF52), let this dry,
and then very lightly streaked on a little artist's oil
"mars brown" and black. I then took my fingertip and
gently drug it along the length of the propeller, to blend the
different colors a little more. This done, the propeller was put
in my food dehydrator and heated on low for a couple of hours.
The oil paints were absolutely dry, and I would recommend this
device to any modeler who deals with slow drying paints.
Wheels and struts were painted.
The wheels were first painted blue to match the fuselage. Once
this was dry, I used my Waldron punch set to punch out circular
masks from Tamiya masking tape. These were placed over the wheel
hubs, and the tires then airbrushed PollyScale Grimy Black (I've
found this color to be a good shade for slightly weathered
tires). After attaching wheels to their struts, these were then
attached in locator holes in the bottom of the wing. I highly
recommend checking the fit of parts on this and any limited run
kit before painting. In this case, considerable enlargement of
the holes in the bottom of the wings was needed to accept the
pegs on the landing gear struts. That was pretty much the end of
the construction process. The result was no prize winner (hey, I
built it for fun, not for competition), but it is a colorful
addition to my models collection. I would recommend it to anyone
who finds the subject interesting and has experience with
limited run kits. |
