Here is my latest.
For the record, I was a big fan of the Accurate Miniatures kits, and wish they were still around. I built several of their kits (B-25B, Yak, Stormovik twice, Avenger, Vindicator, and still have another Avenger and a Dauntless in the stash). The level of detail included OOB is decent relative to the price. You could certainly augment with PE and resin sets, but IMO OOB these kits look just fine detail-wise and fit-wise.
Having said that, this particular release is not likely one I’ll ever tackle again. First, and to be fair, it is a diminuitive bi-plane, but the fact that it is a bi-plane is not why I’m saying this. There are a couple of construction gotcha’s that one should be aware of prior to putting this one on the bench.
First - the landing gear struts attach in an unconventional fashion. The attachment points are not clear, either by evaluating the plastic directly or interpreting the instruction booklet. After the fact, I found a blog referencing this issue; had I known about this problem, I likely would have avoided the big cluster-f**** that I have in this completed build. I didn’t get one of the struts aligned to match the other, and consequently my barrel sits noticeably askew. One strut is higher than the other. By the time I noticed this during construction, the struts had been in place for a day. I considered attempting a repair, but opted against it out of a concern of doing irreparable damage to the rather tiny parts.
Second - the underside gear doors mounting is very - I stress very - difficult. The instructions even reference this. You are to put it into the bay rear-side first, swivel it around and – somehow – position it properly. The instructions do state that it will seem that it is never going to fit into position (my experience) but go on to advise the builder to take their time, be careful, and “it will fit”. Uh, yeah, right. I was never going to get those doors into position without breaking the gear parts that you have to squeeze these doors in around. I ended up shaving off bits of the doors themselves to finally get them installed. And you can’t see what I shaved off on the finished build.
Third - the kit includes a wonderful fret of PE (not brass as is typically the case, but perhaps aluminum). Here is another point where the instructions advise the builder to take their time. I did just that, but still ended up with guide wires that simply don’t look right. These metal parts had some rigidity to them, perhaps too much, but ended up twisting a bit during installation. I did manage to get them installed, but they don’t look like they should on a real bi-plane. There is not enough tautness in them as I managed to get them into place. This is probably my fault alone, as I’ve seen photos of this kit where the builder did a fantastic job in this area.
I painted with AK Interactive Xtreme metal aluminum, steel, and burnt metal, as well as Mr. Color orange-yellow, Tamiya lacquers white, black, red, yellow, and blue, Vallejo tire black, and other colors in the cockpit or the engine - neutral gray and field green.
Next up - Polar Lights’ 1/350 Klingon K’tinga with lights.