Nobody told me until AFTER I bought a Hasegawa Dauntless (A-24A actually) how horrible this kit is. The fit is ok, but the details are SO wrong it’s ridiculous. I won’t go into depth about the tons of little oversights, suffice to say, THE DIVE BRAKES ARE NOT EVEN PERFORATED! Then, to top it off, no one seems to have the Eduard PE dive brakes is stock anymore. I really wish I had held out for a AM kit to surface and just “paid the Man.” I guess that’s what you get for not looking before you leap. Has anybody else wrestled with accurizing this sucka? Any ideas where to get the PE flaps? Any suggestions in general? Thanks in advance folks!
I am not sure if you are talking about the 1/48 one or the 1/72. I can’t speak for the 1/72. But I’ve built the 1/48 one. Well, to me it was quite ok. The cockpit is rather good and the fitting is fine. As for the dive break, it is a real pain. Believe it or not I had to drill out all holes(300+?). I did it last late December and end up spending my New Year’s eve drilling flap holes!! Quite an experience.
If the flap holes really troubles you, and if I remember correctly, Accurate Minature one has flap hole molded open. Hasegawa has one special SBD, I think is the special Midway version which comes with photo edge to replace the original one. I’ll go and check if Verlinder has any.
Hi Justen,
Can’t find any on Verlinden. Try to go to Eduard home page: http://www.eduard.com/ and see if you can order it online. I think the catalgue number is 48451 for the flap and 48142 and 72192 for the cockpit details.
BTW, if you want to model the gunner canopy opened, do dry fit F5 under F2 first. In my case, I had to sand down the bottom part of Part F5 so that it is lowered enough to have Part F2 stacked over it, and it was very difficult to stack F6 under F5, so I skipped it. I’ve heard Accurate Miniature one does not have such problem. Good luck.
Hasegawa did produce one version of the kit that included PE dive brakes. True, it’s not as nice as the AM kit, but it was released a few years earlier.
Regards, Rick
Hey Justen,
I’ll see what I have in terms of the PE dive brakes for you…!!! Maybe I mentioned that to you already? I take it that this kit is getting the best of ya??
O I popped into Ace today and Ron got in a few AM Dauntlesses[;)]. Oops did I say that… LOL[:p]
Better yet, if your going to the Rochester show, check out the vendors there because you never know, you may find what you are looking for.
Flaps up, MIke
It’s just going slow. I keep having to “back-up” every time I realize that Hasegawa forgot somethng major or included something that has no business being there. The cockpit is the worst, of course, because of the “detail density.” I realized AFTER buying the Verlinden detail kit that it was for the [censored] AM kit. gumble gumble… It is going, just not as smoothly as I had anticipated. If you have those flaps on hand, I would gladly buy 'em from you. That is, of course, if you are selling them.[:-^] Let me know…
BTW. Thanks, Anthony, for the help. I can see what you mean about the canopy. I’ll keep that in mind. Or maybe I’ll just grab a vac-formed. Cheers!
Hey Hannaman,
I just bought a complete set of PE, bombs, wheels & cockpit resins from Squadron mail order. All this is for 2 old 1/72 airfix kits, if you think Hasewaga’s was bad, don’t even think of the Airfix.
I hope this helps.
Saul
I’m not an expert in details of an SBD, I built a Hasegawa kit some time ago and it looked ok to me. The only (real) bad thing in my eyes are the dive brakes with the holes missing
This is my “drilled SBD”
I see… Let me look to see what I have fer ya.
Flaps up, Mike