Hi all,
I noticed that Italeri has released the old 1/48 AMT A-20G and as I never built the AMT kit, I was wondering if either:
Anybody has picked up the Italeri boxing and can give me a rundown of the quality of the kit, fit, decals etc, etc?
Or, if anybody has built the AMT A-20G, could they give me their impressions of that kit?
Cheers
Darren
I never built the kit, though I owned it. I also owned the outstanding, but not for the faint of heart or beginner, Koster multi-media kit. I spoke Mr. Koster right after AMT released their first A-20 kit, and he chewed my ear for 15 minutes about how the fuselage was too narrow and could only be fixed with a complete, thick shim all the way around it. I can’t remember all his criticisms. But when Bill Koster talks, modelers should listen. He has designed some of the classic Monogram kits, for example.
Still, I’ve always wanted a night-fighter A-20. I built the old Airfix kit way back when 1/72 was the thing, but it was pretty hopeless.
Oh, BTW, the reason I was calling Mr. Koster in the first place was to ask him if it was possible for me to take the lazy way out, and take the literally hundreds of resin, white metal and photo-etched parts from his A-20 and kitbash them with the injection molded structural parts of the AMT kit, getting out of sanding and fitting a bunch of admittedly high-quality vac-form parts. He, needless to say, gave me a resounding “No.”
If Mr. Koster is responsible the the Mono B-17 he needs glasses!!! need a cement mixer and patula to fill them seam.
Jeff, the only reply I can give to that is, take a look at one of his Koster Aero Enterprises kits. I don’t think the man has vision problems. Something as hugely corporate as the Monogram B-17 had literally hundreds of fingers in that pie before it hit the market.
Tom
I have the amt kit but I haven’t built it yet.Int looks pretty bare but most of it won’t be seen anyway.The rest looks pretty standard for the age with raised lines and all.Not exactly packed with detail but not a lot of choices.I’m sure it will fit right in on the shelf with the rest when done.
Here is a full review of the kit.
http://www.swannysmodels.com/Havoc.html
Bill had nothing to do with either B-17, they were supposedly developed independently but when they came out and Monogram noted the close similarity of the parts their comment to Revell was “Don’t let it happen again.”
Despite Mr. Koster’s disdain for the AMT A-20, he will most likely sell you the parts (don’t tell him what you’re doing with them, I guess) if he still makes them, and a whole bunch of them, like almost all, will fit that AMT/Italeri kit and you will have one hell of a nice A-20. And Koster’s decal sheets for the A-20/P-70 are very, very nice. But then, if you can handle the vac-form, you might as well buy the whole Koster kit, and make any A-20 variant you want.
I’ve never built the Monogram B-17. I’m waiting for AcMin to kit it. I could be old by then, but if Trumpeter doesn’t do one in 1/32, then AcMin will do it in 1/48 in the next 20 years or so.
Thanks for the info all and thanks for the review Swanny.
I think I can feel a fathers day present coming up.
Darren