Post by cobramike on Jun 27, 2011 17:21:43 GMT
Hawkeye review
Revell 1/144
Unlike many of my acquaintances going for bigger scales as age takes its toll on eyesight, I have found myself increasingly drawn to 1/144 as a medium for showing larger aircraft types. Revell’s new E-3C Hawkeye has not disappointed.
The kit comes packaged in a tiny box at only £6.99. Don’t be fooled, it’s a gem waiting to be missed. In fact it’s almost worth the asking for the decals alone, you get three USN and one French scheme, full national insignia, and masses of perfectly legible stencilling all printed by Cartograph.
The new tooling is very crisply done with fine detail in an appropriate light grey plastic. A clear sprue has a one piece canopy ( give me masking over fiddling with separate little windows any day ! ) and an insert for the nose. The fuselage comes as two halves, whilst the wing is one-piece. Sub assemblies account for the engines, tail feathers and roto-dome.
The cockpit interior even has instrument decals ( albeit you’ll have a job seeing them once installed ! ) there are seats and control wheels provided too. The only problem the kit has lies here. The cockpit floor doubles as the top of the nose-wheel bay and as such is too low. Were you to sit pilots in the seats they would struggle to peer over the cockpit sill ! ) This only really becomes apparent later making the cockpit look strangely empty from some angles. If you were being pedantic the cockpit side windows should be bulged, a feature precluded by moulding limitations – maybe a vac-form replacement will emerge.
In all other respects the kit falls together superbly, you just need to add some weight in the nose ( not mentioned in the instructions and this really is a tail-sitter ) and the engines need blanking plates to stop you seeing straight through from intake to jet pipe.
The instructions do however caution you to leave the dome and its’ pylon off until after the decals are applied – very sound advice as there are some tricky walkways to contend with. As I had elected to do the box-top VAW-117 scheme with dark blue vertical fins I also left these off until later.
This means that painting comes sooner than usual, which is the bit I rather enjoy. The VAW-117 base scheme is all grey ( I fancied a change from the classic USN grey / white ) In 1/144 I try to scale the colour down and introduce some subtle tone changes if I can. Reasoning that the grey plastic was not a million miles from the final colour I first used a dark grey wash to pick up all the panel lines. This done I masked the prominent grill and the three portholes on the starboard side ( to keep the detail sharp ) and misted a coat of acrylic light grey on the airframe. This process is rather akin to ‘pre-shading’ and results in the panel lines – which are delicate and soon filled with paint and varnish – being faintly visible under the grey.
I then ran a pin along the lines that needed to be more prominent, control surfaces, and the de-icing boots, which clears the grey paint and leaves the lines sharp. Brush-painting the de-icers was then easily accomplished using Humbrol 66 ( ie dark grey rather than jet black which would be too much contrast in this scale ) At this stage I also picked out the engine intake lips with steel and the exhausts with a gold-tinted aluminium to suggest scorched metal. A coat of Klear and it’s decal-ready.
There are a lot of decals. The afore-mentioned walkways went on first after which it’s a case of working around the airframe positioning the primary markings, and then filling in the stencilling. This latter extends to individual crew names on the undercarriage doors so it takes a while ! Everything settled down well using MicroScale solvents, including the long prop-warning strip which has to traverse some impressive shapes and contours.
There are also red/white/red tips for the props ( both sides ) which look good, albeit a tad fiddley to apply. With hindsight I should have thinned the blades a little first but nobody’s perfect !
Being a CAG bird I didn’t go for excessive weathering, settling for a little streaking across the flaps ( the base grey almost dry-brushed over the Klear-darkened original coat ) after adding the pylon, tail fins and u/c doors a mist coat of matt varnish brought everything together leaving a subtle sheen which I felt was about right for the scale. The very last item to go on was the dome itself and there sat a super little model.
A simple base was scored and punched to represent a section of carrier deck, the tractor, tow bar and figures coming from a Dragon kit to lend scale and colour. (Before anyone writes in, this is slight artistic licence as the Hawkeye would not often be towed around the deck with wings spread, my defence is that these particular tractors are only used on board ! )
I really enjoyed this model. Revell at their best in every respect and fantastic value, who’s first with folded wings ?
Mike Verier
Dragon 1/144
EA-6B Prowlers VAQ-140 Patriots
Dragon’s latest two-in-a-box offers are remarkable value for money – they appear to be updated tools offering latest technology up grades such as very fine weapons and detail parts.
The formula is to offer markings for one ‘colourful’ aircraft and one ‘service’ alternative. In the case of USN subjects that tends to equate to a CAG bird and a ‘normal’ one. The decals provided are extremely good and worth the asking on their own.
The other pleasant surprise is the delicacy of the canopies, which are almost as thin as vac-forms and a huge improvement on what used to be offered in this scale.
The instructions are a little simplified – I suspect the assembly drawing has carried over from the original release – but in full colour including profiles for both schemes
Assembly was straightforward but ‘Dragon fit’ did appear in places, notably the wing/fuselage join, which required some fettling. Some strange steps are also evident on the belly where the moulding process couldn’t cope with compound curves. The tail hook insert too proved quite difficult, for what it’s worth I found it the least taxing to fit it before joining the fuselage halves.
A cockpit tub is provided with four Martin-Baker shaped representations, and a dividing bulkhead which has a passable go at the rear instruments and ‘scopes. You could expend some effort on detailing here, especially if you intend showing the rear canopy open. I settled for some dry-brushing to pull out the moulded detail, with tape seat-belts in one aircraft and four Aeroclub pilots in the other.
Once the tub was in place in one fuselage half I incorporated some weight in the extreme nose to ensure that the finished model wouldn’t tail-sit.
On the real aircraft the canopies ( except the windscreen ) are coated with gold to protect the crew from being micro-waved by the emissions of their own equipment. Such a prominent feature should be replicated, my approach was to leave the canopies on the sprue ( for ease of handling ) and - working on the inside - mask the windscreen and mist on one coat of Tamiya Smoke followed by one coat of Clear Yellow. I worked very slowly but still managed to get a puddle at one point, luckily it cleans off easily ! Once you have the desired browny/yellow tint, allow to dry, remove the mask and dunk the whole thing in Klear as normal. ( I now await a pre-mixed colour called ‘canopy gold‘ please paint people ! )
Having got the fuselage and wings assembled, and the canopies masked (nightmare - c’mon Eduard – you know you want to do masks in 1/144 !!) it was time to paint. Conveniently, the plastic is a shade not a million miles from the grey ( gray) needed, so I first washed the airframe with dark grey to pick out the panel lines, and gave the canopy framework a black coat for the interior. I added the stores pylons at this stage, but left the u/c doors and tailplanes on the sprue for easier painting.
Finally I brush-painted walkways on the wings, fuselage and tailplane. Using different shades of grey as these seem to vary from airframe to airframe. Once this was done I misted on coats of the light and dark grey ( Extracrylic FS and FS lightened with white to account for scale effect ). The idea is that the panel lines and darker walkway areas show through. An extra pass on the airframe intended for the CAG decals ensured that it looked cleaner and more freshly painted. A coat of Klear renders everything decal-ready.
A note of caution here is that the decals for the service ‘lo-vis’ version correctly replicate the very low contrast between markings and background. If you do not lighten the base colour sufficiently they will literally disappear !
The decals go on very well, especially the big tail marking which has to deal with all sorts of lumps and compound curves. They responded well to Micro solutions snuggling into panel lines with no trace of silvering. The only real criticism of the decals is their depiction of the fuselage and wingtip formation lights, which need toning down from the bright yellow used.
Another coat of Klear allowed for some additional wash-detailing and a little weathering before finishing off with a coat of Xtra matt varnish to bring it all together.
This brings you to the stores and undercarriage stage. The u/c legs and wheels are extremely good and delicately detailed, the doors however are quite thick. In the case of the nosewheel doors I replaced them with thinner sheet, taking the opportunity to punch out a circle for the landing light and dropping a lens in.
The stores provision is quite comprehensive in the range of items offered, a good deal of it on what are clearly new tool generic sprues. The Prowler-specific bits - jamming pods and fuel tanks - are not however provided in sufficient quantity to enable all the standard store combinations to be depicted. As there are two kits however I was able to ring the changes a bit. Thus the ‘operational’ bird received three pods and two HARMs, whilst the CAG machine had the remaining pod, two fuel tanks and two HARMs. Asymmetric loads appear quite common on the Prowler so I can only recommend checking, as they say, your references. Best reference I have is World Air Power Journal Vol. 30 ( Autumn ’97 )
There is no doubt that the revival of interest in 1/144 has generated some outstanding new / updated models and these are no exception. Moreover they represent outstanding modelling value – keep ‘em coming !!
Mike Verier
Revell 1/144
Unlike many of my acquaintances going for bigger scales as age takes its toll on eyesight, I have found myself increasingly drawn to 1/144 as a medium for showing larger aircraft types. Revell’s new E-3C Hawkeye has not disappointed.
The kit comes packaged in a tiny box at only £6.99. Don’t be fooled, it’s a gem waiting to be missed. In fact it’s almost worth the asking for the decals alone, you get three USN and one French scheme, full national insignia, and masses of perfectly legible stencilling all printed by Cartograph.
The new tooling is very crisply done with fine detail in an appropriate light grey plastic. A clear sprue has a one piece canopy ( give me masking over fiddling with separate little windows any day ! ) and an insert for the nose. The fuselage comes as two halves, whilst the wing is one-piece. Sub assemblies account for the engines, tail feathers and roto-dome.
The cockpit interior even has instrument decals ( albeit you’ll have a job seeing them once installed ! ) there are seats and control wheels provided too. The only problem the kit has lies here. The cockpit floor doubles as the top of the nose-wheel bay and as such is too low. Were you to sit pilots in the seats they would struggle to peer over the cockpit sill ! ) This only really becomes apparent later making the cockpit look strangely empty from some angles. If you were being pedantic the cockpit side windows should be bulged, a feature precluded by moulding limitations – maybe a vac-form replacement will emerge.
In all other respects the kit falls together superbly, you just need to add some weight in the nose ( not mentioned in the instructions and this really is a tail-sitter ) and the engines need blanking plates to stop you seeing straight through from intake to jet pipe.
The instructions do however caution you to leave the dome and its’ pylon off until after the decals are applied – very sound advice as there are some tricky walkways to contend with. As I had elected to do the box-top VAW-117 scheme with dark blue vertical fins I also left these off until later.
This means that painting comes sooner than usual, which is the bit I rather enjoy. The VAW-117 base scheme is all grey ( I fancied a change from the classic USN grey / white ) In 1/144 I try to scale the colour down and introduce some subtle tone changes if I can. Reasoning that the grey plastic was not a million miles from the final colour I first used a dark grey wash to pick up all the panel lines. This done I masked the prominent grill and the three portholes on the starboard side ( to keep the detail sharp ) and misted a coat of acrylic light grey on the airframe. This process is rather akin to ‘pre-shading’ and results in the panel lines – which are delicate and soon filled with paint and varnish – being faintly visible under the grey.
I then ran a pin along the lines that needed to be more prominent, control surfaces, and the de-icing boots, which clears the grey paint and leaves the lines sharp. Brush-painting the de-icers was then easily accomplished using Humbrol 66 ( ie dark grey rather than jet black which would be too much contrast in this scale ) At this stage I also picked out the engine intake lips with steel and the exhausts with a gold-tinted aluminium to suggest scorched metal. A coat of Klear and it’s decal-ready.
There are a lot of decals. The afore-mentioned walkways went on first after which it’s a case of working around the airframe positioning the primary markings, and then filling in the stencilling. This latter extends to individual crew names on the undercarriage doors so it takes a while ! Everything settled down well using MicroScale solvents, including the long prop-warning strip which has to traverse some impressive shapes and contours.
There are also red/white/red tips for the props ( both sides ) which look good, albeit a tad fiddley to apply. With hindsight I should have thinned the blades a little first but nobody’s perfect !
Being a CAG bird I didn’t go for excessive weathering, settling for a little streaking across the flaps ( the base grey almost dry-brushed over the Klear-darkened original coat ) after adding the pylon, tail fins and u/c doors a mist coat of matt varnish brought everything together leaving a subtle sheen which I felt was about right for the scale. The very last item to go on was the dome itself and there sat a super little model.
A simple base was scored and punched to represent a section of carrier deck, the tractor, tow bar and figures coming from a Dragon kit to lend scale and colour. (Before anyone writes in, this is slight artistic licence as the Hawkeye would not often be towed around the deck with wings spread, my defence is that these particular tractors are only used on board ! )
I really enjoyed this model. Revell at their best in every respect and fantastic value, who’s first with folded wings ?
Mike Verier
Dragon 1/144
EA-6B Prowlers VAQ-140 Patriots
Dragon’s latest two-in-a-box offers are remarkable value for money – they appear to be updated tools offering latest technology up grades such as very fine weapons and detail parts.
The formula is to offer markings for one ‘colourful’ aircraft and one ‘service’ alternative. In the case of USN subjects that tends to equate to a CAG bird and a ‘normal’ one. The decals provided are extremely good and worth the asking on their own.
The other pleasant surprise is the delicacy of the canopies, which are almost as thin as vac-forms and a huge improvement on what used to be offered in this scale.
The instructions are a little simplified – I suspect the assembly drawing has carried over from the original release – but in full colour including profiles for both schemes
Assembly was straightforward but ‘Dragon fit’ did appear in places, notably the wing/fuselage join, which required some fettling. Some strange steps are also evident on the belly where the moulding process couldn’t cope with compound curves. The tail hook insert too proved quite difficult, for what it’s worth I found it the least taxing to fit it before joining the fuselage halves.
A cockpit tub is provided with four Martin-Baker shaped representations, and a dividing bulkhead which has a passable go at the rear instruments and ‘scopes. You could expend some effort on detailing here, especially if you intend showing the rear canopy open. I settled for some dry-brushing to pull out the moulded detail, with tape seat-belts in one aircraft and four Aeroclub pilots in the other.
Once the tub was in place in one fuselage half I incorporated some weight in the extreme nose to ensure that the finished model wouldn’t tail-sit.
On the real aircraft the canopies ( except the windscreen ) are coated with gold to protect the crew from being micro-waved by the emissions of their own equipment. Such a prominent feature should be replicated, my approach was to leave the canopies on the sprue ( for ease of handling ) and - working on the inside - mask the windscreen and mist on one coat of Tamiya Smoke followed by one coat of Clear Yellow. I worked very slowly but still managed to get a puddle at one point, luckily it cleans off easily ! Once you have the desired browny/yellow tint, allow to dry, remove the mask and dunk the whole thing in Klear as normal. ( I now await a pre-mixed colour called ‘canopy gold‘ please paint people ! )
Having got the fuselage and wings assembled, and the canopies masked (nightmare - c’mon Eduard – you know you want to do masks in 1/144 !!) it was time to paint. Conveniently, the plastic is a shade not a million miles from the grey ( gray) needed, so I first washed the airframe with dark grey to pick out the panel lines, and gave the canopy framework a black coat for the interior. I added the stores pylons at this stage, but left the u/c doors and tailplanes on the sprue for easier painting.
Finally I brush-painted walkways on the wings, fuselage and tailplane. Using different shades of grey as these seem to vary from airframe to airframe. Once this was done I misted on coats of the light and dark grey ( Extracrylic FS and FS lightened with white to account for scale effect ). The idea is that the panel lines and darker walkway areas show through. An extra pass on the airframe intended for the CAG decals ensured that it looked cleaner and more freshly painted. A coat of Klear renders everything decal-ready.
A note of caution here is that the decals for the service ‘lo-vis’ version correctly replicate the very low contrast between markings and background. If you do not lighten the base colour sufficiently they will literally disappear !
The decals go on very well, especially the big tail marking which has to deal with all sorts of lumps and compound curves. They responded well to Micro solutions snuggling into panel lines with no trace of silvering. The only real criticism of the decals is their depiction of the fuselage and wingtip formation lights, which need toning down from the bright yellow used.
Another coat of Klear allowed for some additional wash-detailing and a little weathering before finishing off with a coat of Xtra matt varnish to bring it all together.
This brings you to the stores and undercarriage stage. The u/c legs and wheels are extremely good and delicately detailed, the doors however are quite thick. In the case of the nosewheel doors I replaced them with thinner sheet, taking the opportunity to punch out a circle for the landing light and dropping a lens in.
The stores provision is quite comprehensive in the range of items offered, a good deal of it on what are clearly new tool generic sprues. The Prowler-specific bits - jamming pods and fuel tanks - are not however provided in sufficient quantity to enable all the standard store combinations to be depicted. As there are two kits however I was able to ring the changes a bit. Thus the ‘operational’ bird received three pods and two HARMs, whilst the CAG machine had the remaining pod, two fuel tanks and two HARMs. Asymmetric loads appear quite common on the Prowler so I can only recommend checking, as they say, your references. Best reference I have is World Air Power Journal Vol. 30 ( Autumn ’97 )
There is no doubt that the revival of interest in 1/144 has generated some outstanding new / updated models and these are no exception. Moreover they represent outstanding modelling value – keep ‘em coming !!
Mike Verier