The Kit - This is the latest release in Pacific Crossroads’ line of 1/350 scale aircraft. Now I must insert a disclaimer here: I wrote the English-
language ship history for this kit and other Pacific Crossroad kits, both released and planned, as a service to Boris Mulenko and I am even
acknowledged in the assembly instructions. As a matter of fact, the introduction to this review is that ship history verbatim. That is the extent of my
involvement and I was not involved in any other aspect of the creation of this model kit. This kit comes with resin and photo-etch parts to build one
aircraft and a decal sheet. The resin fuselage with the rudder and horizontal stabilizers is cast as one piece. The casting is good with recessed doors
and window frames. You can see some faint evidence that the master appears to have been produced using rapid prototyping, but it is faint enough
that is should be hidden under a coat of paint. There are some minor casting imperfections on the rudder that needs to be cleaned up. Also, because
they are rather thin, the horizontal stabilizers are warped, curling up slightly. Fortunately another stabilizer assembly is provided as a separate part. The
fuselage has slots on either side to fit the wings and this should make for a good strong joint.
The wings are cast as separate parts and are also well detailed, though there are also some minor casting imperfections that need to be addressed. As
mentioned above, the wings have tabs that fit into the fuselage. The wings are cast on runners that appear to be easy to remove and are attached to the
wings at the tabs. The smaller parts include that horizontal stabilizer part and the floats. These are cast on runners with several small and this
attachment points that facilitate removing them without marring the parts too much. The photo-etch parts include the propellers, parts for the float
supports, supports for the stabilizers, antenna and machine gun barrels. It appears that the etching was not cleanly done and does not go all the way
through the brass affecting several parts, which is a shame. The float supports are comprised of several parts which looks a little complicated at first
but as you will see it was not as hard to assembly as I feared. The brass has part numbers etched into the fret. Decals are provided with several of the
black outlined orange triangle markings used by Dutch at this time as well as some Dutch flags. Assembly instructions are provided on a double-sided
sheet of paper. The first page has the history and specifications for this aircraft by yours truly, so I will refrain from comment. The flip-side has two
diagrams of the airplane with the resin parts assembled showing the placement of the numbered photo-etch parts. At the bottom there is a color view
showing decal placement and general painting instructions.
The Build - As expected the build is fairly easy with the only tricky part is handling some of the smaller photo-etch parts. I filled in the casting
imperfections with some Mr. Surfacer 500 applied with a brush which I sanded smooth. Since the cast on stabilizers are warped and there is really no
effective way to straighten them out permanently, I decided to replace them with the alternate cast part. Since the latter is cast as a single piece for
some odd reason, I cut it into two separate parts using the ones cast into the fuselage to mark where to make the cuts. I then cut off the cast on
stabilizers and glued the new ones into place. The main wings fit snugly into the fuselage and I hide the tiny line of a joint with a little bit of Mr.
Surfacer. I hand brushed the undersides with Testors Model Masters Aluminum and waited a day to dry. I then masked this area off and painted the
upper sections with Testors Model Masters Olive Drab from a rattle can. After waiting for the paint to dry for a couple of days, I tried coloring the
numerous windows using a thin dark blue mechanical marker with mixed results due to my unsteady hand. While not perfect, it did the trick more or
less. I then gave the model a coat of Tamiya Gloss Clear for decaling. The decals from the sheet went on easily and reacted well to MicroScale setting
solutions. My one complaint with the decals is that the wing markings are a bit undersized. I neglected to take a photo of the underside of the wings
but trust me, they are a little too small. Once the decals were set, I sealed them with some more gloss clear. Since the brass parts were not etched
completely through, some of the parts were a little difficult to remove. Most of the parts are for the floats supports. The way I approached these
supports was to drill two small holes with a #80 drill bit in the fuselage were parts 6 are attached. This part will determine the spacing for parts 1 for
which I also drilled small holes into the wing to give them a good anchor point. Lastly I glued the cross brace (part 2) and then brush painted the
supports aluminum and then attached the floats to the ends of parts 1. The remainder of the photo-etch parts went on without difficulty. I thought that
the photo-etch could have been a little finer and the etching problem did not help in this regard. After the rest of the parts were in place, the model was
sprayed with Testors Dullcote.
|
|
