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Ever since Tamiya
announced this kit I've been eagerly looking forward to it. On July 31st
2003, I
found it in a local hobby shop on my lunch break (they'd just gotten it in that
day) and I snapped it right up.
It looks SWEET in the box. I was not disappointed. Lots of crisp
parts with excellent recessed detail. The cockpit, landing gear, wheel
wells, and other small parts offer crisply molded detail better than any other
Jug kit in 1/48 that I've built or had. Also, the kit offers multiple
marking and armament options, and the decals (though I don't plan on using them
- I have a 404th FG/507th Sqn bird in mind, another one my grandpa got to fly)
look really good, with excellent white areas and color. I've heard that
Tamiya
decals are thick, but I've only built a couple of them in my life (the Sea
Harrier back when I was a kid, and the Space Shuttle last year), so I don't have
a lot of experience with them.
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Cockpit comparison |
Decals |
Engine and pilot figure |
Here's a pic with
the Tamiya and Hasegawa cockpits side by side, the Tamiya cockpit is more
detailed. I would have no qualms about using the Tamiya pit, it looks
comparable to the Jaguar resin cockpit. Also I'm including a pic of the
decal sheet. Tamiya offers decals for the seat belts and instruments.
A resin seat with belts molded in, like Black Box's seat, would be a good
addition. But I could maybe make a couple of plastic strips and put the
decals on, that would be good if I wanted a different pose for my belts (like
one hanging out of the cockpit). If I were Tamiya, I'd make one seat with
belts molded on and one without for superdetailers. As for the
instruments, you could paint the panel, put the instrument decals on, and dab
clear parts cement or acetate to finish the job, that would look real nice.
The kit includes a
good rendition of the R-2800 and a full pilot figure, which the Hase kit doesn't
include. The only thing missing from the R-2800 is some wires, which can
be replicated by Evergreen plastic rods. (The P-47 Detail and Scale book
shows where the wires are).
The kit also includes three types
of drop tank (2 150 gal/1 108 gal), 500 lb bombs, and rocket launchers, which is
more than Hasegawa provides, and which is very welcome as I plan to do this bird
with rocket launchers. And of course there are the machine guns - but they
are all separate, which is the same as the Hase kit. During my experience
building the Hase kit I found the separate guns hard to work with. I like
how Testors did the guns on their 1/48 Jug kit - they molded them all on a
single block, it was much easier to put them into the wing that way.
That's one of the very few
nitpicks I have. My only real concern about this kit is that the upper aft
fuselage and vertical tail are molded separately from the rest of the fuselage.
Hasegawa, Testors, and Monogram all have the tail molded with the rest of the
fuselage and that to me is simpler and cleaner. But again, I have limited
experience with Tamiya kits, if the upper fuselage fits great to the rest of the
bird then my concerns will be allayed. The flaps and rudder are
positionable, and that's a nice touch. The kit also includes wing spars to
align the wings...I'll have to see how this works out - I'm used to the
traditional butt and tab method.
This kit has the parts to do a D-25 bird, but not the fin fillet to do a D-30.
(Maybe that's why they molded the tail separately?). The Hase D-25 kit
does include a fin fillet to make the D-30. Since the bird I have in mind
is a D-30, I'll use the Hase fin fillet on this one.
CONCLUSION
Overall, this kit is an excellent model, from what I can see, and as far as I
can tell, is a better kit than any other Jug bubbletop in 1/48 scale. No
kit is 100 percent perfect, but this one comes close. I look forward to
building it!! Mostly out of the box, too.
Justin
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