Re: 1/48 Revell A-7A Corsair II Review Build
Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 8:14 am
WELL DONE, Medic! Way to stick with it and that is a stunner. i'll forward to Revell.
Hey Lyle, just don't tell them what I think of this kit.
As I said before, this is an old mold kit and it shows. Lots of flash on the parts and not a lot of detail. It has raised panel lines as well. The clear parts were good and clear. The decals looked good but were very thick. Sprue gates on some parts were really big.
One of the biggest issues was the intake. It's molded into top and bottom halves with the nose gear bay molded onto the bottom half. There's no way to get rid of the seam line in the intake after it's built. The fit into the fuselage was horrible. I test fitted it several times and it just wouldn't sit flush with the front intake lip. I'm gonna have to make or get an intake cover for it. The fuselage halves were a pain to get to fit together. I had a lot of work to get the seams to go away and still didn't get them all. The wings comprise of upper and lower halves and the fit was good. Now the fit of the wings to the fuselage was bad and left gaps top and bottom. Even after sanding the attachment areas I still had gaps.
As far as weapons it comes with two drop tanks, two 500lb bombs (they look like 1000lb to me) and six 250lb bombs. The fit of the drop tanks again was bad. The way the bomb attach to the pylons is very crude and doesn't even remotely look realistic.
The decals come with two options: A US Navy jet and a a Portuguese one with special markings. I'm a US Navy aircraft fan so I had to do that option. Like I said the decals are very thick and once on the kit, it's really hard to get them to move. It seemed that the setting solutions really didn't do much but they do sit and conform to the panel lines well. After a satin coat I added the landing gear and weapons. If you do the landing gear the way the instructions tell you, the mains will not sit at the correct angles at all. Then there's the nose gear. There's a half moon shaped slot for it and it's molded backwards in the gear bay so that the nose gear leg won't fit. I had to cut it off the nose leg and super glue it in. There's not much detail in the gear bays or the gear legs themselves. The main gear doors don't have real good attachment points but the nose gear doors do.
Conclusion- This is not a kit for beginners! With a lot more work I could have made this so much better. I didn't look to see if there was aftermarket stuff for this as this was supposed to be an OOB build. A couple other reviews I read on this state that the markings aren't correct for an A-7A so some aftermarket decals if they can be found would be better.
Thanks to SPAM, Lyle and Revell for letting me do this and waiting forever for me to finish this.