SPA Modeler

Not really proud of this one as it was plagued with issues but saved it from the bin











She's up on the shelf with my trainer squadron

Looks good enough John. I know the feeling of a build not quite turning out as intended. Are those 3-D decal seat harnesses or standard decals on the ejection seats?

Looks great to me! I am not impressed with Italeri kits. The ones I've done have been a pain in the ass to build.

Italeri makes good armor kits, but so so aircraft kits. The last original Italeri tooled aircraft kits that I remember ever building are their 1/72 Waco and Horsa gliders. As a kid, I remember them being on the complicated side for their size and scale. I have a few of their kits in my stash, and aside from their 1/48 F-16s, they sure do look to be less well detailed than kits of the same subjects put out by other companies. But then again, they are also usually more affordable as well. However they do a lot of re pops of other companies' older molds, such as ESCI.

Thanks Stik & Mike. The seat belts are from the OOB decal sheet and look rather cartoonish. I'm not bagging on Italeri - this was just a tough build. I experimented with using black CA as a filler after watching JKims builds. The debonder I bought reacted poorly with the plastic. That put it up on the shelf for a while.
As far as detail - ya, I have a Wolfpack T-45 kit in the stash and it is way more detailed for sure. But - the Osprey I built, which is an Italeri kit, is one of my favorites.

The Osprey isn't too bad but other Italeri kits that I've done almost got the hammer of doom. The Growler that I was doing got trashed pretty quickly cause it was just horrible.

Their OH-13 is pretty nice as well. I've got 5 of their kits complete and I have 7 more of their kits in the stash. Hoping the S-3 Viking is decent as I'm looking forward to that one

Oh yeah. I forgot about the Vikings. I have a Viking and a Shadow in the stash.

keavdog wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 11:31 am Their OH-13 is pretty nice as well. I've got 5 of their kits complete and I have 7 more of their kits in the stash. Hoping the S-3 Viking is decent as I'm looking forward to that one

The S-3 Viking originally started out as an ESCI kit from the late 70’s/early 80’s. AMT got the molds and added some new parts for their boxings of the kits. Most likely Italeri just added a bit more for the S-3B, and certainly did new decal sheets.

But Italeri didn't add the parts to make it a true "B" version. Those parts you can get from Phase Hanger Resin.