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| P-39N Aircobra, Co.
9 Gv. IAD, 1944, Col. A.I. Pokryshkin |
Air Power Series.
Very nice little model with good details, mostly well done finish,
a pilot (hi, dude!), and suprisingly sturdy landing gear.
Manually lowering the gear.
This is another model with complicated landing gear. However, despite
the potential for disaster, everything fit pretty well, except for
the door just forward of the front landing gear, which had to be cut
to fit. This means of course that I got too much cut off, and had
to sticky-clay the thing into place. It took so long to cut the door
to size that I felt like flying the whole model into the path of a
Santa Fe freight. But, once I got over the heat of battle and put
the plane on its gear, the model's three-point stance was excellent
(and it didn't have a hint of tail-drag).
Ever so moldy.
HobbyMaster should have a real hit with this mold. Hopefully it will
have long legs (pun intended), especially considering all the potential
camo schemes from the many air arms that used the real machine.
Paint your mold.
It would be a good thing if HM softened the highlighting in the panel
lines. These lines are well defined and beautifully executed (this
is a very high quality mold), but the wash used to fill the panel
lines should have been about half as dark. (Another oddity: the box
and various drawings of this particular airplane show it to have a
red spinner. Don't know why the model has a black one.)
Boxing match.
The box holding the model is a lot smaller than the usual HM affair,
and more attractive. I really like this size box because (for some
subtle and unfathonable reason) it suggest that there is a quality
product inside. Go figure!
Yeah! All-in-all,
a dinkum machine, and most collectable. I'll be getting as many HM
P-39s as finances allow. |
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