Topics tend to come back around in the modeling community. And for the past month or so, it seems like the crosshairs have landed on airbrushes.

Please allow me to contain my boundless enthusiasm.

See…discussions about airbrushes…or any other tool or material (or hell…any kit) will inevitably result in someone wandering in and dropping this gem:

“It’s not the quality of the tool, but the modeler at his bench”

First of all

Fuck. Could these words possibly be rearranged to sound any more pretentious? It sounds like some pablum that a fedora-wearing, Ayn Rand-worshiping college freshman would write.

Quality of the tool, indeed.

Second

As with other modeling catchphrases that make my right eyelid twitch – “it’s just a hobby”, et al – “the modeler at the bench” is an un-argument.

That is to say, it contributes exactly nothing to the discussion.

Third

Here’s why it adds nothing.

YES, a modeler’s talents and experience and so on matter a great deal. Of course they do, and nobody is suggesting otherwise.

You can’t go throw down on a 1/32 Tamiya Corsair, an Iwata Custom Micron and *poof*, suddenly become an amazing modeler.

BUT, this idiotic saying contends that the quality of tools, materials and kits doesn’t play any kind of a role. Which is just staggeringly incorrect.

Here’s the deal. Lots of things matter. And lots of things come together to make a model.

• A Modeler’s Skill – I would define skill in this instance as the product of 1) raw talent and 2) experience/knowledge.
• Kit Quality (or “Medium” Quality) – The quality of the kit in question. Yes, there are kits that are objectively better than others.
• Materials Quality – The paint and glue and pigments and whatever else gets thrown at a build. Yes, there are objectively better materials. Gunze or Tamiya or Mr. Paint are objectively better – in terms of modeling – than craft acrylics. They have better spray properties, they don’t lift if you look at them funny, and so on.
• Tool Quality – Again, there are objectively better tools, be they sprue cutters or airbrushes or paint brushes.

Are these all equal? Not really. If I were to break them out on a 100 point scale, I’d say:

• Skills = 55%
• Kit = 10%
• Materials = 20%
• Tools = 15%

Now, these numbers are mostly there to keep the math easy, so no need to get all bent out of shape. We’re just illustrating a point here, after all.

A truly expert modeler coming in with all 55 Skills Points will have a distinct leg up on a modeler with 15 or 20 SP. If a 15 SP modeler had top-of-the-line everything to throw at a project, their upper bound would still be a total of 60 points.

What tools, materials, kits etc do is extend the upper bound.

Opinion Time

There’s another thing that quality tools, materials and kits do. They make it easier to access and hone skills.

A good pair of sprue cutters gives you cleaner cuts, leaves you spending less time cleaning up parts, and can often mean less chance of breaking delicate parts.

A good airbrush – that feels good in your hand – can let you focus more on applying paint than on getting things dialed in.

Good cement – a solvent welder like Tamiya Extra Thin or MEK – lets you be more precise in your construction, and not as reliant on clamps and rubber bands and other goofy contraptions to hold a part just so.

The modeler matters. Skills matter. But so does the quality of what you’re working with.

Benchtime is usually pretty sedentary, right? We sit. We maybe raise or lower our seat to get a better angle on certain tasks (I frequently lower my chair as far as it’ll go when I’m dealing with landing gear alignment fun-time).

Well, last night, I found that wasn’t working.

I’ve been taking my sweet time with Trumpeter’s SBD-5 Dauntless, and last night it was time to mask off the recently-painted walkways so I can get on with the rest of the painting.

Sitting while trying to get my hands into position without bumping the horizontal stabilizers and getting the tape lined up properly just wasn’t working.

So I stood up. That small change – standing, looming over the aircraft – made the taping a total breeze.

And it got me thinking about the other times I engage in weird bench maneuvers to tackle random tasks:

• Rigging. I will frequently tackle rigging of all kinds while standing (or sometimes straddling my chair in reverse).
• Buffing. If I’m using the Dremel and a buffing wheel, I’ll usually wander away from the bench while I do. Those cloth wheels fling shit everywhere.
• Masking prop tips. I don’t know why, but I do this better on my feet.
• Fill-and-Dump Intake Painting. This necessitates standing, since I use a vise on the farthest end of my bench to hold the intakes.

What about you? Any weird bench maneuvers or habits you find yourself doing?

Not counting crawling around on the floor, swearing and looking for that tiny little part that you can swear fell right by your fucking foot but now it’s apparently vanished into another dimension…

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. After all, airbrushing is probably my favorite single aspect of modeling. And, with all the airbrushing talk that’s been swirling about the interwebs lately, it seems like the time is right.

So what is this? It’s a deep – I hesitate to say exhaustive – dive into many, many facets of airbrushing, from airbrush selection to paint selection to mixing paints to spray discipline.

Here are some in-post links if you want to skip ahead:

• I – Choose Your Weapon
• II – On Selecting Primers
• III – Paints
• IV – Thinner and Air Pressure
• V – How to Airbrush

Part I: Choose Your Weapon

A – Do I even need an airbrush?

In my opinion, yes. It’s possible to limp along in this hobby with paintbrushes and rattlecans, and even thrive in certain genres like figures, but the atomization, precision, and layering capabilities of an airbrush simply cannot be matched by other means.

B – I’m just going to buy a cheap knockoff. High-end airbrushes aren’t worth the money.

Uh, hold on there, chief.

Think of airbrushing like driving, and airbrushes like cars.

If all you’re doing is driving to and from work each day in traffic, you’re not pushing the performance envelope of any car at all. You can get by just fine in any random shitbox. The same goes for airbrushing. If you’re going to setup at standoff distance and just hit a model with a single color of paint, yeah, pretty much any airbrush will do. A nicer airbrush is kinda like a nicer car. It’s a hell of a lot more pleasant to sit in traffic in a Mercedes than an early 90s Kia, but nothing about the drive will really change.

The difference comes with specialty work.

To keep the driving analogy going, let’s pretend that broad work – laying down primers and clear coats for example – is the equivalent of hauling a trailer. And fine, detailed work is like carving corners on a winding country road.

An early 90s Kia is going to suck ass at either of those specialized tasks. For towing, you’d want a truck with the power and gearing to haul the appropriate load. For cornering, you’d want something small and nimble with a finely tuned suspension and excellent steering feel.

If you’re learning or seeking out something of a more general purpose airbrush, a knockoff will probably work just fine. But as you start to push against its performance limitations, that’s when you want to consider investing in something higher end.

C – Type of Airbrushes

If you’re new to airbrushing, sorting out all the terminology of airbrushes can be kinda confusing. What’s the difference between single and double action, internal and external mix, blah blah?

Internal vs. External Mix – Refers to where the air and paint mix. Internal mix airbrushes combine the two inside the body, forcing air to flow past the nozzle and pulling paint with it because physics. External mix brings the two together outside of the body. Externals are generally clunkier, but can still be good for broad work. The most common example is the Paasche H.

Single vs. Double Action – Refers to what happens when you use the airbrush’s trigger. With a single action, the trigger unleashes airflow, and that’s it. You have to use a separate control to regulate the paint flow. With a double action, pushing down on the trigger opens up the airflow, and pulling back on it pulls the needle back to allow more paint to flow through the nozzle. It sounds complicated, but it’s second nature once you get the hang of it.

Gravity vs. Side vs. Siphon Feed – Refers to where the paint comes from. Gravity feed airbrushes have a cup that sits on top of the body. Paint enters the needle channel thanks to gravity. Side and siphon-feeds plug in from the side (dur) or the bottom and paint is sucked into the needle channel because physics.

What do I prefer? Internal mix, double action, gravity feed.

D – My Airbrush Lineup

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a total airbrush whore. I’ve got several. And I’ve sold several more. Unlike cars, it’s nearly impossible to “test drive” an airbrush. Ones I don’t like I’ll turn around and sell as used – lose a bit of money in the process, but not as much as you’d think.

Anyway, here’s my current preferred roster. Note though – I very much prefer painting small, even on larger kits, so what I consider a workhorse, others may consider a detail brush.

Broad (for clear coats, primer, etc):

Iwata Revolution CR-M2 – A nice, compact single action airbrush that can spray pretty fine, but opens up for a nice, broad pattern.

Grex Genesis XGI – This airbrush is basically Grex’s Tritium airbrush, but instead of the Tritium’s pistol grip, it uses the traditional “stick” layout. It can swap in multiple needle/nozzle sizes, can be equipped with a fan tip, has swappable paint cups of different sizes, and sprays very nicely. Though I find it sprays broader than my Iwatas (the 0.3mm needle puts out a pattern broadly similar to my HP-CS with a 0.5mm needle).

General Purpose

Iwata HP-C Plus – This airbrush is great at the middle range – from pretty fine detail to more than broad enough for my purposes of applying paint. I’ve swapped in the 0.2mm needle/nozzle combo from other airbrushes in the High Performance Plus line.

Olympos HP-62B – Olympos’ airbrushes are the direct ancestors of many of Iwata’s higher end airbrushes. This one is broadly identical to the Iwata HP-B+, save only for the fancier preset handle on the B+. It has a smaller paint cup than the C+, but otherwise behaves about the same. Again, good for that midrange.

Fine Detail

Iwata Custom Micron CM-B – I managed to score this one used off eBay, and probably count it as the single best modeling purchase I have ever made. Before you try one, you think “how good can these things really be”. And then you try one. This is my go-to for a lot of my painting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

E – What else do you need?

An airbrush is the obvious step one in getting an airbrush, but what else do you need to make it work?

• Air source – Most people go with a compressor, but if you have convenient access to a welding or gas supply store, you might also consider getting a CO2 tank. Just don’t go for those compressed air cans – they’re expensive as shit and have incosistent airflow.
• Regulator – A regulator controls the air pressure coming from your air source into your airbrush. Get one that has a lot of precision from the 0-40 psi range.
• Moisture Trap – Duh. Moisture and airbrushing is a bad combo.
• Braided Hose – Just get one. They’re tough and they don’t get tangled up.
• Quick Connect – If you run more than one airbrush, you want to invest in these. They make swapping brushes a 5 second task.
• Ventilation – Don’t airbrush in a closet. Even with acrylics. Breathing in atomized paint is bad. I spray in my garage. Others have cool spray booths with exhaust fans.
• Respirator – Again, breathing in atomized paint is bad. Get a respirator. I’ll admit I don’t use mine all the time – when I’m spraying small I’m throwing so little paint around that I’m sure plenty of other things will kill me first. But for primers and clears and metalizers and other things that call for more paint flow, definitely a good idea to have one around.

Part II – On Selecting Primer

A – Why Prime?

I highly recommend priming for several reasons. First, to give yourself a uniform canvas from which to build your paint scheme – no junk like different colored putty and so on peeking through. Second, a good primer will etch into the plastic, giving paint much better adhesion than going over bare plastic. Third, in reverse, a good primer will protect the plastic from hotter paints than can craze and otherwise deteriorate polystyrene.

There are plenty of people who don’t prime and they’re pretty set in their ways. But I would highly recommend it.

B – Good Primers

There are some primers that have proven unreliable enough that I would never go near them – Vallejo’s primers, Alclad’s gloss black base, Model Master Acryl primer all come to mind. And in general, acrylic primers are going to be somewhat hobbled because they don’t etch into the plastic the way a good enamel or lacquer primer will.

So what do I consider good primers?

Model Master Gray Primer – The old classic, and if enamels are still your thing, you can’t go wrong here. Darker gray than most other gray primers, it dries to a nice, clean semi-matte finish.

Tamiya Fine Surface Primer (rattlecan) – Okay, I hate Tamiya’s weird ass paint strategy of releasing so many things as rattlecan only . That includes their primer. But decanted, this stuff is rather nice and has the benefit of being widely available.

Badger Stynylrez – Stupid, stupid name, but probably the only acrylic primer that I’ve ever used that I would use again on purpose. It sprays like absolute shit, and looks like absolute shit as it hits the surface, but over about ten minutes, something amazing happens. It levels out to a perfectly smooth finish. It’s important to give it at least 24 hours to really set, but after that, it’s more or less as impervious to paint as lacquer primers. Note though – it has a weird tendency to attract dust (I think it might be a static charge thing), and it’s susceptible to scratches. Also available in Europe as UMP Ultimate Primer.

Tamiya AS-12 Bare Metal Silver – A primer in all but name, this metallic doesn’t really look like bare metal silver. It’s closer to aluminum lacquer paint and therefore great for Mustang wings, postwar RAF aircraft and so on. But it also goes on wonderfully and is tough as nails. It’s especially useful as a primer on something that will be getting heavily chipped.

Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1200 – See above comments about Tamiya Fine Surface Primer. This stuff is similar, but you can also get it in a pot and mix yourself. While it goes down nicely for the most part, it can be prone to dusting – which is when some particles of paint dry before they hit the surface and don’t level in. No biggie, though, just come back with a fine grit sandpaper or some fine steel wool (or sometimes even an old t-shirt) and a few swipes will result in a scarily smooth finish.

Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1500 – 1500 doesn’t have as much “body” as 1200, and that’s great for priming a well-prepped surface. It also comes in black, which is even better. Available by the pot or in rattlecan form if you’re a goddamn barbarian.

Of these, I use Mr. Surfacer 1500 Black about 85% of the time. Stynylrez and Tamiya AS-12 make up the balance.

C – When acrylic primers make sense

Never.

Ha! Not really. As much as I love my Mr. Surfacer, there are times where it makes a ton more sense to use an acrylic primer, and by acrylic primer I mean Stynylrez.

Case 1 – Hard to reach areas prone to dusting. Think about, say, the gear bays of an aircraft, or the intricately detailed wheels of a car kit. If your lacquer primer dusts on you in there – which it could, since airflow gets wonky in confined spaces – good luck getting sanding materials in there effectively. In cases like this, Stynylrez is a great alternative.

Case 2 – Kits that use non-styrene parts. Probably the best case here is Meng and their workable tracks. If the tracks are made of styrene, it’s a softer variety, and there are real-world examples of harsher paints like lacquers and enamels degrading them. Again, a good case for using an acrylic primer on these.

Part III – Paints

LOL – paints are such a minefield, especially with the shoddy and confusing labeling so many of them use. Generally, I would consider it a wise choice to not go all in on just one brand of paint – personally I usually bounce between three. Options are good! So is knowing their limitations and what it takes to get them to perform at their best.

A – Types of Paints

Very generally speaking, there are three types of paints – acrylics, enamels, and lacquers. Now, the reality is more complicated. For example, Tamiya’s paints are alcohol-based acrylics, but they thin and spray wonderfully with lacquer thinner.

I don’t think there’s any one perfect paint – each one includes some kind of compromise.

Enamels – Growing up, Model Master enamels were the shit. I didn’t know of any other paints. Nowadays, I feel like I see enamels referenced less and less, though, and probably because they have some drawbacks other types of paints don’t.

Enamels can be both airbrushed and brush painted, so the flexibility is nice. They’re also pretty slow-drying, so useful for drybrushing and various weathering applications.

Unlike water-based acrylics, enamels are toxic and make poor drink mixers. And unlike acrylics and lacquers, enamels can take a long time to fully cure. Even for patient builders, waiting a week for your paint to outgas its happy ass is aggravating.

I’ve also noticed that enamels can’t be thinned down to the extremes that lacquers and alcohol-based acrylics can. At a certain point, paint separation becomes a real issue. Adding some lacquer thinner into the mix can help – it’s extra heat keeps things in check a bit – but still it feels like a band-aid.

Water-Based Acrylics – These are increasingly found in those dropper bottles favored by Vallejo, Ammo, Hataka, AK Interactive and so on. Often they come pre-thinned for airbrushing. A few brands – Lifecolor comes to mind – still use more regular paint pots.

Water-based acrylics generally thin best with their own thinners (though I’ve heard UMP thinner is great, I have yet to try it). Water can work, but if you’ve ever sprayed water through an airbrush, it has a tendency to spider and suffer from the ravages of surface tension.

Water-based acrylics, like enamels, generally have a limit to how far they can be thinned. This also impact their ability to truly spray small.

These paints also have to be built up in layers. Lifecolor I think is the most notorious for this, but far from alone. Lifecolor only likes to go down over other Lifecolor, so your first layer has to be built up gradually, each layer getting more “bite” over the previous. The same holds true for Ammo.

Water-based acrylics don’t bite into preceding layers very well, so they can also be far more prone to tape lift. Not a big deal if you’re doing armor, but an aircraft that requires lots of masking may be asking for trouble.

And of course, water-based acrylics have to contend with the dread “tip dry”. Tip dry occurs when the paint literally dries on the needle or in the nozzle as air passes over it. This leads to lots of frustration and expletives, especially because it tends to kick in worst when you are trying to paint small (not enough paint flow to keep things moving). The common solution is to wet the tip with water or thinner on a q-tip or paintbrush, but a more elegant solution is to add some retarder to the paint. It won’t magically fix everything, but it’ll cut down on tip dry to a large extent.

Water-based acrylics are also generally excellent for brushpainting. I keep a stock of Vallejo Model Color around expressly for detail work.

Lacquers and Alcohol-Based Acrylics – I’m lumping these two together as both thin down with lacquer thinner and both have very similar performance characteristics. But I’ll note that you can thin alcohol-based acrylics like Tamiya with water, with UMP thinner, and even with isopropyl alcohol. Just don’t expect it to have the same spray characteristics it does with lacquer thinner.

Okay, let’s get the bad out of the way. Lacquers ain’t great for brushwork. They’re also toxic and generally a bad thing to come into contact with. All the best modeling materials are.

The good? Lacquers spray beautifully. Just beautifully. If all you’re used to is shoving Vallejo (or god forbid some kind of trashy craft paint) out of an airbrush, the first time you try a quality lacquer, you will shit your pants and start crying it’ll be so beautiful. And because lacquer thinner cooks off so quickly, they aren’t as prone to run, and they dry basically as fast as acrylics.

Lacquers can also be thinned to within an inch of their lives. My favorite paint – Mr Paint – already comes thin and ready for the airbrush, but for fine work I’ll bump it a bit more. For Tamiya and Gunze paints, my starting ratio is 2:1 thinner-to-paint, but I’ve pushed it to 80, 90% thinner before and still had things hold together.

This ability to thin so far means that lacquers can be applied in translucent layers, super effective for building up a nice, varied paint finish.

Due to their hotness, lacquers are also good at grabbing surfaces, so tape lift isn’t a huge issue unless there’s some kind of contamination or weakness under them.

I thin my lacquers and alcoholic acrylics with Gunze Mr. Leveling Thinner. It’s got some kind of retarding agent in it that helps prevent dusting but I haven’t found that it does anything to prolong drying times.

B – Choosing Your Paints

What paint works best for your needs depends on several factors. Selection, availability, and the conditions in which you paint all matter. What you will be doing with the project matters. The type of subject matters.

Personally, my three main go-tos are Mr. Paint, Gunze Mr. Color, and Tamiya. As mentioned above, I love the way all three of these spray and perform, and I feel like I have a level of control with them that isn’t present with other paints.

That said, I will be using AMMO acrylics on an upcoming armor build, because it will be a single color scheme and their chippability plus the assortment of various shades around the color I need will enable lots of interesting subtleties.

IV – Thinner and Air Pressure

Okay, so we’ve covered off on airbrushes and paint. Now it’s time to bring them together. But first, we have to get things ready.

A – Thin your fucking paint

Some paint brands come pre-thinned for airbrush use. But what constitutes “thinned” is pretty relative based on what you want to do with the paint. Sometimes – gasp – you may have to thin them further.

Paints like Tamiya, Gunze, Lifecolor and Model Master that come in regular pots will all need to be thinned before spraying.

Thinning makes paint flow better through your airbrush, less likely to clog your airbrush, and eases cleaning at the end of the session. It also lets you reduce the coverage – or opacity – of the paint, so you can build up in layers and be more controlled in how you’re applying shit to your model.

How to thin? 

First, get a container. DO NOT THIN OR MIX PAINTS IN YOUR AIRBRUSH. This is lazy and a wrong move can jack shit up. Nothing like having incompatible paint and thinner turning to sludge in your nice airbrush, right? Take the extra thirty seconds and mix in a separate container.

My favorite mixing containers are tattoo ink cups (15mm size). You can find them on eBay for ridiculously cheap, and they’re nice and small so you’re not wasting paint and thinner you’ll never get to use.

Next, get a way to transfer paint to said container. Those silly acrylic dropper bottles have that built in. For other paints, again, to eBay! Buy a fuckton of disposable pipettes and go to town. You can kinda sorta re-use them, but when you can buy them by the thousand…

Okay, so next, you use the pipette to grab a bit of paint. Drop a small amount into one of those ink cups. If we’re talking Tamiya or Gunze I’ll only fill about the bottom third or so. THEN, get some thinner with another pipette, and fill the rest of the way.

Once you’ve added paint and thinner, stir to mix. I’ve got a Tamiya mixing stick that I love, and it’s big flat face helps me gauge when I’ve mixed enough. You kinda have to learn what a well-thinned paint looks like, but if you stir and come away with solid, uniform color coverage on the mixing stick, you need more thinner.

There’s that old adage of thinning “to the consistency of milk”. Fuck that. Personally I prefer to mix my paint to the consistency of lacquer thinner with some percentage of paint in it.

Note: Do not ask me for my thinning ratios. I don’t know. It’s like asking a mountain biker what gear they’re in. Uh…the one that feels right for the terrain and fatigue level. Same with paint – I’m familiar enough with the paints I use that I start at 2:1 and add thinner from there as needed, based on what I’m going to be doing with the paint. With things that are pre-thinned, like Mr. Paint, I’ll just add a few drops, mix, and then add a few more drops as needed. It’s not like I mix in precisely 73% thinner or anything.

B – Dial it in

The other key ingredient of airbrushing is air. How much do you need? As with thinning, I have some rough starting points and then dial it in further. Your mileage may vary based on altitude, humidity, temperature, paints etc. But for me:

• Mr. Paint – 5-10 PSI
• Tamiya and Gunze – 8-15 PSI
• Primer – 15-20 PSI

Again – shit varies within and even slightly beyond that range, but it’s a starting point.

It also helps to have a slightly higher pressure running as you load and test-spray paint. Once it’s flowing, THEN dial it in.

V – How to Airbrush

At its most basic, an airbrush is simply spraypaint that you can control. You push down on the trigger to unleash pressurized air, and that air flows past the needle, pulling paint along with it thanks to the venturi effect. Science, bitches.

However, just like driving is more than mashing the accelerator pedal, airbrushing is way more than mashing the trigger and screaming “yeehaw”.

A – A few “settings” that matter

Apart from making sure your paint is properly thinned and your air pressure is dialed in, there are a few what I’ll call “settings” that determine how well or not your airbrush does its job.

Distance – Generally, you don’t want to get to standoff distance with an airbrush. There are times where it’s useful, but this isn’t a rattlecan. If I’m working small, I may be right up against the surface. If I’m doing something broader, I may back off to three, maybe four inches. Very, very rarely more than six.

Movement – As with sharks, with airbrushes. To stop moving is to die. Hold an airbrush in place too long and you’ll get a flood of paint that will run, spider, fisheye, and so on. Keep moving, even if you’re doing tight mottling work.

Paint Flow – Just as air pressure and airflow matter, so does paint flow. If you crank back on the trigger on a double-action airbrush, you’re going to drastically increase the flow of paint, and this often ends poorly, with a big nasty sploosh on the project you’ve been slaving over.

B – Think in terms of opacity

I think airbrushing is really a lot easier to get a handle on if you know Photoshop. In Photoshop, you can dial the opacity – how transparent or not something is – for just about any element.

If you set the airbrush tool to 15% opacity, every time you go back over it will add another 15% opacity, until it gets to 100%. It’s the exact same with a real airbrush. Opacity builds up over time.

IF you try to get to 100% opacity in one go, you’re going to have a bad time. Plan to put down a layer, then move on, then come back.

C – Learn Spray Discipline

In many ways, operating a double-action airbrush is similar to driving a stick shift. Both require a certain feel, both take a bit of time to get the hang of, and once you do, both seem like second nature, like an extension of yourself.

There are two things that I have found to be really useful in developing good spray discipline and not shooting paint all over the damn place.

First, work to develop a sense for your airbrush’s engagement point. That is, the point when you can get beyond air, to where paint starts flowing. That point differs from airbrush to airbrush and paint to paint, but as with thinning ratios and PSI above, it’s one of those things that’s generally in a certain range, and once you find it, you can go back to it again and again.

Second, get comfortable playing in only the first third to half of a trigger’s range. There are times where you will find it appropriate to pull all the way back and let shit fly, but in my experience, those times are rare, even when applying primers and clear coats. Instead, you want to be metering exactly how much paint is flying at your model. To return to driving analogies again, you could drop the clutch and slam on the gas and go, but it is a poor and inelegant way to go about it.

Some airbrushes have presets build into the handle that are essentially little more than needle stops. These keep you from moving the trigger back past a certain point. Personally, I can’t stand them. To me they’re like training wheels, and frustrating when you need to take the airbrush away from your model to blow it out at full blast (even really nice lacquers can start to build on the tip if you’re spraying small).

Once you’ve got paint flowing in a nice, controlled fashion, keep the above settings in mind – so keep the airbrush moving, stay as close to the surface as your spraying dictates, and don’t try to get it all in one pass. Come back, build your paint lovingly, in layers.

And unless you’re dealing with something that needs a broad, uniform finish, like paint on a car model, or a clear gloss, don’t spray any wider or harder than you need to. Every so often I’ll see models that are hilariously masked from head to toe just to contain overspray from a band on the fuselage.

This is crazy. If you’re getting overspray more than six inches from where you’re spraying, you’re doing something wrong.

D – On Spraying and Masks

Often on a kit, it’ll be necessary to mask something – a canopy, camoflage, some area where you don’t want your paint to go, and the like.

And frequently online, you’ll run into people having problems with paint bleeding under their mask.

This shouldn’t happen, and it’s fairly easy to avoid.

We’ve already discussed going light, and building paint in layers. This is doubly true for when spraying around masks. If you don’t flood paint at the area, there’s not enough paint hitting the surface to run under anything.

To further lessen the chance, and to prevent paint “ridges” where the masks are placed, imagine a 180 degree arc over the surface. At 0 degrees, you would be spraying along the surface directly at the edge of the mask. At 180 degrees, you’d be spraying along the top of the mask out toward the surface.

Generally, you want to keep your spray angle greater than 100 degrees. This will ensure that 1) there is no air flowing at the mask edge. No airflow in that direction, no paint flow in that direction. And 2) paint won’t “ridge” up against the mask edge.

Now, there are times where this isn’t entirely possible. Consider canopy masks. If you’re trying to paint a canopy frame that’s 1mm wide, and you have masks on either side, if you go too oblique on one, you’ll be spraying air straight into another. In these cases, the key is to BACK OFF. Back off the pressure. Back off the paint flow. Build the paint up lightly and gradually.

Soft Edge Masking

Hard edge masks, such as you’d use for canopies or anti-glare panels or hard-edged camoflage, are fairly straightforward. Use tape, burnish it down.

But what about soft-edged camoflage?

Personally, unless it’s a very, very tight soft edge like seen on many tropical schemed Spitfires, I prefer to freehand. But…I have that Custom Micron and paints that support that kind of work. If you’re just starting out, or using paints that don’t really do so well at spraying small and tight, you can still use masks.

One popular method is to roll out sausages of poster putty (also called white tack). This stuff will stick just enough to your model to let you do the work. To get a soft edge, spray out over the sausages, again at that 100-plus degrees angle. The more that you spray straight down onto the masks, the harder the edge will be. One issue with this method though, is that you need to keep that angle pretty consistent, or else you’ll end up with some parts of the camo demarkations softer than others.

Another method I prefer is to trace out the camo pattern on paper – tracing paper is pretty good for this, and then cut it to shape. Once you have your pieces, trim the inside so that you effectively have a 1/4″ ribbon, and tape the inside portion down. When you spray, the untaped edge will flap slightly under the airflow, naturally creating that slightly soft edge.

Again, though, once you can, freehand is generally the cleanest and least burdensome way of tackling softer-edged camoflage.

All for Now

So…closing in on 5000 words…think it’s time to wrap it up for now. If this finds enough traction and interest, I’ll follow up with some more advanced techniques – stippling, mottling, tackling exhausts and that kind of thing.

After my deep dive on airbrushing, I’ve received several requests asking for me to discuss my cleaning process.

I get it. Cleaning sucks and it seems like it’s probably one of the top three stories people throw out about why they don’t like airbrushing.

So what the hell. Let’s talk about cleaning.

First, a story

About six years ago, I was building Zvezda’s 1/48 La-5. Lovely little kit that even my newly-returned idiot self couldn’t fuck up too bad. But in the days before AKAN and Mr Paint, decent World War II VVS colors were hard to come across. I decided to order some White Ensign Colourcoats.

Screw these Humbrol-like tins, by the way

Color-wise, the AMT-4 and AMT-7 were gorgeous. As paints, though, they left a lot to be desired. Purportedly enamels, they thinned pretty much the way that sand thins in water – not at all. Mineral spirits, Testors enamel thinner, lacquer thinner…whatever I tried, the paint would basically swirl around for 30 seconds and then fall out of suspension and gather at the bottom of whatever container it was in.

My dumb ass decided to put this through an Iwata HP-C+.

The result on the kit was okay, but the process was an utter mess – I had to stir and dump small amounts constantly and by the end the needle channel and nozzle were packed with AMT-7 sludge.

Then, after a half-assed clean, my dumb ass decided to pull the needle and nozzle and drop them along with the airbrush body into an ultrasonic cleaner.

Are you wincing yet? You should be. The ultrasonic basically just distributed the White Ensign sludge EVERYWHERE. Including past the paint cup and all around the trigger, the air valve, the needle spring.

Despite more than five following years of strip-and-cleans on that HP-C+, and replacement of nearly every single internal part, the air valve STILL sticks regularly.

The moral of the story? Don’t do stupid shit, and don’t stick whole airbrush bodies into ultrasonic cleaners. If it’s clean enough that you’re confident you won’t have problems, it’s clean enough that it doesn’t need to go into the damn thing to begin with.

The Anatomy of an Airbrush and Where It Gets Dirty

I won’t lie, I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start here. But I guess understanding how paint moves through an airbrush and where it goes and doesn’t go is kinda important. So…this handy cutaway:

See that o-ring between the trigger and paint cup? Unless we really fuck things up (like, by putting an airbrush body into an ultrasonic cleaner), we shouldn’t have to worry about anything aft of that o-ring at all.

Forward of the o-ring, here’s what happens. You put paint into the paint cup. Gravity (or suction, with side and siphon feeds) pulls the paint into the needle channel. This is the hole in the airbrush where the needle resides. Paint flows along this channel, down the needle to the nozzle.

The nozzle cap sits over the nozzle. It’s job is essentially to channel airflow over the tip of the nozzle, which sets off the venturi effect that pulls paint off the end of the needle and sends it flinging toward whatever you’re aiming at.

Paint can buildup on the needle, of course, from the tip back to the o-ring. It can also pack up inside the nozzle – particularly thicker paints and those with larger-sized pigments. It can also build up, over time, in the needle channel or in front of the o-ring. On side- and siphon feeds, you have the addition of whatever the “transfer tube” mechanism happens to be to worry about.

But basically – that is our universe for the purposes of this post.

Paint – It Fucking Matters

When talking about paint, a lot of modelers (myself included) focus heavily on spray performance, reducability, and other factors. But paint choice matters just as much when it comes to cleaning.

Some paints just clean up a lot easier – both immediately after use and days or even weeks later.

I’ve found that many water-vinyl acrylics – Vallejo and similar – may seem like they clean up easily, but can actually leave a lot of little deposity crud deep in the recesses of your airbrush – packing into the nozzle in particular.

Many metallics are similar – especially Alclads. While they seem to clean up fairly easily, it seems like you’re never quite done. Fill the cup with thinner a fifth time and there’s still little metallic bits floating around in it, like when you wipe and wipe and wipe and realize your journey is still not at an end.

Most lacquers that I’ve used, though, they clean up very quickly and easily and rarely pack up in the dark places.

Thin is Good

Do you like strip-cleaning your airbrush? I don’t. It blows. It’s tedious, it risks damage to tiny, delicate parts that can be easy to drop (looking at you, HP-C+ nozzle), and it takes away from more enjoyable bench activities.

Good news is, you can reduce the frequency of those strip cleans by thinning your paint. I tend to spray very small and very thin – 2:1 thinner to paint is my starting ratio for Tamiya and Gunze – and I’m frequently playing closer to 3:1 or even 4:1. When I clean and flush at the end of a session, well, think of how much easier it is to flush diarrhea than, uh, chunky style. Same principle.

Lacquer Thinner is the Honey Badger of Airbrush Cleaning

Lacquer thinner doesn’t give a shit. Vallejo? Ammo? Model Master? Tamiya? Lacquer thinner will destroy it and send it flying out of your airbrush.

Yeah, with acrylics that whole “water cleanup” thing is nice, but it only goes so far. And some paints that say that have a bad tendency to skin over in the cleanup process.

Want to stick with water or Vallejo Airbrush Cleaner or whatever? Cool. You do you. Nobody is twisting your arm.

But if you wind up with stubborn bits, introduce them to your friend Mr. Lacquer Thinner.

Clean with the Well Liquor

I’m a big advocate of thinning your paints with quality thinner. It’s not the place to skimp with potentially harsh, potentially inconsistent hardware store thinner, much less your cat’s fermented piss or whatever other homebrew solutions get tossed about.

“But Mr. Leveling Thinner is expensive!”

And a bottle, properly tended and cared for, will last you for a good long while. I just cracked a new one – my last lasted me better than a year.

But for cleanup? Bring out the bargain shit.

How I Clean My Airbrushes

So. Let’s say I’ve just finished an airbrush session at it’s time to clean up. The paint on display here isn’t even paint – it’s Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500. A very tiny bit more of a challenge than Mr. Paint or heavily thinned Gunze.

Step 1 – Remove the excess paint. Either dump it back into the mixing container or, if it’s Mr. Paint that I didn’t have to thin, return to its bottle. This way you have a lower volume of paint to clean up.

Step 2 – Add a small amount of lacquer thinner. Just enough to cover the needle, basically. Crank up the air pressure. Direct the airbrush into your cleaning pot or the eyes or nasal passages of your enemies and let fly. This flushes out the low-hanging fruit of the paint still in the needle channel and nozzle.

Step 3 – Fill the paint cup most of the way with lacquer thinner. With a q-tip, scrub out the paint cup. It should be obvious what this does. If your paint is smeared all over or being an asshole, rinse and repeat.

Step 4 – Fill the paint cup about halfway with lacquer thinner. Q-tips are great at “wiping the bowl” but they suck at doing any kind of cleaning work up under the needle and into the needle channel. So get a trusty old paintbrush – I have a flat brush expressly for this task – and scrub around under the needle. When you’re done with that, very gently clean around the needle/nozzle tip. Flush.

Step 5 – Feeling frisky? Remove the needle, wipe it down with a q-tip soaked in lacquer thinner, dry it off and replace. But honestly I rarely do this and will usually pull and wipe down the needle at the START of a spraying session instead. With Tamiya, sometimes skipping this step will mean that the needle will stick and need a tiny bit of effort to remove. With Gunze and Mr. Paint, that’s not an issue I’ve ever had.

You’re a Damned Barbarian!

What? I don’t strip and clean my airbrushes down to their component parts after every color, or every session?

Fuck no. It’s overkill. It’d be like changing the oil in your car after every day’s commute.

But I’ll fully admit that spraying thin and using paint that is extremely cleanup friendly are two things that make my downright Visigothic cleaning regimen possible. In the last year, I’ve performed probably two deep strip-cleans.

Bet he didn’t strip, either

So – with the right paint and high thinning ratios, you probably don’t need to worry about spending a half hour after every paint session cleaning your airbrush. There – that’s one less excuse not to pull it out.

One year ago today, I hit publish on a rant against pre-shading – specifically pre-shading panel lines.

I also hit some nerves, judging by the storm and fury churned up in the post’s comments, on Facebook, and across various forums.

Good.

This hobby is about relaxation and decompression, sure, but for many of us it’s also a journey of constant improvement. Of new techniques and new understandings. It can be easy to forget that, and to fall into the complacency trap. To follow the same rote modeling cookbook over and over and over. Which is how things like pre-shading become so commonplace.

The rant bowled straight into that complacency. It knocked cobwebs loose. Even, amazingly, among the knee-jerk brigade (and there’s always a knee-jerk brigade).

And amid all the epithets hurled my way, and the admonitions of why couldn’t I have been gentler and more equivocating, something happened.

It made a fucking difference.

I’m of the opinion that views, likes and so on are the weak sauce of analytics. But they’re also among the easiest to quantify, especially with WordPress and its busted ass stats. So for the sake of expediency:

Prior to the rant, my blog would very occasionally climb past 1,000 average visits per day on a month-by-month basis. Afterward, it would never drop below that threshold. 2015 wrapped up with an average 1,234 visits per day, a 41% increase over 2014. So far, 2016 is sitting happy at well over 1,400.

Total visits jumped to 31,181 in September 2015, and have never fallen below 35,000 since.

The audience for my Facebook page has skyrocketed as well. If you look at September 2015, right in the middle, you can see a definite jump, followed by a steeper angle of growth:

Black-Basing is a Thing Now

Back in the summer of 2014, I threw up a post about what I called black-basing.

Despite some assumptions, I’ve never claimed this as my discovery. The idea of priming in black is not a new one. I may have added some twists with what happens after that, and with the rationale behind it, but I am pretty sure the only truly new thing about black-basing was the name.

For a year it kind of lurked in the shadows, picked up and played with here or there.

But after the rant, interest in black-basing exploded. More and more modelers decided to give it a shot and ended up very happy with their results. Today, not a week goes by that I don’t see some referral link leading away to some far corner of the internet where another person is giving it a go. And I’ve noticed that even my detractors have started using the term black-basing to describe the technique.

When the rant went up, I heard more than my fair share of “why couldn’t you just make a post saying here’s this technique I like”. Well, I did exactly that, and I saw where that went.

Turns out, taking a provocative stance gets people to focus their attention more! Who knew? Aside from all of recorded history?

Do I Still Hate Your Panel Lines?

Yes. Yes I do.

But maybe I’ve grown more refined in my hatred as this debate has roiled. Here’s where I stand today:

Aggressive, all-over panel line shading is still bad. I don’t care if it’s pre-shading, post-shading, or a heavy black panel line wash. It’s bad, it’s unrealistic and it’s unimaginative. Yes, some weathered aircraft do have some deep black panel lines, and even staining running along them. But even the most weathered aircraft in history doesn’t have uniform skunk stripes crisscrossing every panel like a damn tartan blanket.

Objectivity and subjectivity are different things, and many fail to appreciate that. When I say that uniform pre-shading is unrealistic, that’s not just “my opinion”. It can be checked against objective reality. There’s a lot that’s subjective in this hobby, that depends entirely on preferences, but there’s a lot that’s objective, too, especially when you’re making claims of realism.

Panel line pre-shading is good for one thing. As much as I dislike it, pre-shading does one thing very right – it gets modelers thinking in terms of layers and opacity. The “bomb it on” school doesn’t work when you’ve got pre-shade lines all over the place. If you go too heavy with your paint, you’ll just cover them up. Unfortunately a lot of modelers do get stuck here, but at least with the foundational understanding of opacity, it’s an easier springboard into much more nuanced paintwork.

It’s important to think beyond panel lines. Look at almost any military aircraft and you will see subtle variations across the entire surface of the paint. Flying through atmosphere at several hundred miles per hour, subjected to wind and bugs and dust and UV rays and salty sea air and rain takes a toll. And yet probably eight out of every ten aircraft builds I see have completely clean, uniform paint. This not only robs the paint of depth and realism, but it makes overdone panel lines stand out even more.

Going for verismilitude? Then go for references. Verisimilitude is “the appearance of being real” – which I think encapsulates nicely what many of us strive for with our builds. So when going after a project, find the best references you can. Understand the way paint and weathering work on your subject. Look at the details. How is paint touched up? Is paint touched up? What do other aircraft in the same squadron look like? Are there weird details that you can pull into the build? Mismatched drop tanks?

And importantly, understand that most vehicles go through cycles of clean and dirty. If you’re lucky sometimes you can catch the same vehicle in various stages:

Dirty

Clean

How? Oh…

References are your friend and your support. Even if photographs cannot always be trusted (different films used in WWII interpreted different colors into black and white differently, colorized photos are dangerous etc), they can provide direct evidence of faded and degraded paint, chipping, fluid leaks, and so on.

A black or dark base is still the best way I’ve found to set up tonal variation. The problem you run into with gray or white primers is…covering the primer. Which can lead to a lot of extra paint use and ultimately leads to those swaths of uniform paint that rob a kit of depth and realism. Now, I’ve seen a few people say here and there that black is too much contrast for, say, a light gray.

Potentially. Or if you do it all wrong. But the black in black-basing is just that, a base. You can put whatever you want on top of it – even white. You aren’t fighting to fully cover the black the way you have to with gray or white, because what peeks through is just going to be a slightly darker tone of your main color. And you can control that micro-contrast in the marble coat.

I’m not the biggest fan of my 1/72 Sea King build, but it shows how a black base can benefit even a rather clean gray.

If you want, you can even bring in multiple colors at the marbling stage to change things up. Doing a faded Intermediate Blue? Marble with a full-strength Intermediate Blue and add in some lightened Intermediate Blue before blending. By the time you get to the blend coat, there really shouldn’t be any 100% black showing through anyway.

Constant experimentation is your friend. The best way I’ve found to keep growing as a modeler is to keep questioning and keep pushing your boundaries – both of understanding and of ability. Why does this work? What if you tried that thing instead? Or tweaked this approach this way? Give it a shot. Learn. Use it or discard it.

My current Dauntless build has been an experimentation boon for the paint mule.

And just as importantly, don’t just blindly follow the “leaders”. By all means, learn from them. Seek to understand not only new techniques, but why they’re used and how they work. And then switch them up. If something doesn’t work, seek to learn why.

That goes for me as well. I’m a big fan of black-basing as a foundational technique, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the one true path. Or that it’s the end of learning. I’ve been playing a lot with what happens after the black base is down.

And a lot of it has been wasted effort, but some of it has proven super effective. I’m sure that, on my next build, I’ll be experimenting even more.

When Hobby Boss let it slip that they would be releasing the Flanker family in 1/48 scale, the news was met with guarded excitement.

On the one hand, the Flanker – in its many guises – is a fascinating subject for modern aircraft modelers. It’s big. It’s got perhaps the best lines of any modern fighter. It’s seen wide service. It’s worn a variety of schemes and markings, and the more worn down examples present some interesting challenges to the weathering-inclined.

Note the pilot – this is not a derelict

There also hasn’t been a truly good Flanker in 1/48 scale until this year. Academy’s wildly inaccurate effort was the only game in town until the arrival of Kinetic’s Su-33 Sea Flanker. But the Sea Flanker is just one variant in a, uh, sea of Flankers.

On the other hand, Hobby Boss – with its sister brand Trumpeter – is a favorite punching bag of the forum pitchfork brigades. Some of the hostility is well and truly earned thanks to sloppy execution and “how could they not see that?” accuracy slips.

But Hobby Boss seems to have an A Team and a B Team. And when the A Team is on a project, even if there are accuracy slips the result tends to be a nicely detailed and well-engineered kit. For example their F-14s. When all of the stars align, we’re blessed with some truly good kits in every regard – such as the recent A-6 Intruder and A-37 Dragonfly.

The Su-27 Kit

So when the first of the Flankers, the Su-27, finally made its way out toward the end of the summer, there was a huge sigh of relief. There were a few very minor accuracy slips that 99% of modelers will never notice (and there’s no satisfying the other 1% ever), but aside from those, the Su-27 is an absolutely gorgeous kit that finally gives us an alternative to the Academy plastic.

The only downside? The relatively steep $80+ MSRP.

But…the Flanker is a BIG jet, and that’s not an unheard of price for a well done 4th-generation fighter. Besides, street price is something more around $66 generally. Still pricey, but reasonable in the larger context of the market.

With the first hurdle cleared, a lot of eyes turned to the Su-34.

The Duckbill

The Su-34 “Fullback”, if you’ve never heard of it, is a dedicated strike variant of the Flanker platform. Instead of the usual tandem arrangement for two-seat aircraft, it puts the crew side-by-side, a la the A-6 Intruder or F-111 Aardvark. This gives the forward fuselage a weird, ungainly look utterly at odds with the sleek fighter body behind it. And modelers tend to love weird and ungainly.

Unlike the Su-27, the Su-34 hasn’t been done before in 1/48. At all. Not even poorly. So while it’s honestly more of a novelty than the Su-27, it’s nevertheless generated a lot of interest among online modelers.

The problem is…problems.

Problem 1 – Dat Nose

The Su-34’s most distinguishing feature is its nose – as you could guess by its nicknames – the Duckbill and the “Flying Platypus”. So if you’re going to really fuss over any part of a kit, it’d be that, right?

Well…

Hobby Boss has been on damage control, but let’s face it: the nose is fucked. Fortunately, being the nose, it should be relatively easy for the Quickboosts and Wolfpacks of the world to churn out a correct version in resin that we could swap in.

But, compared to the excellence of the Su-27, still a disappointment.

Problem 2 – The Price

Quick. Given the Su-27’s $80ish MSRP, what do you think the Su-34’s pricetag is being set at?

Assuming a slight premium for the redesigned upper fuselage, more cockpit to fuss with, and the addition of a shitload of bombs, I don’t think $100 would be out of the question.

But apparently Hobby Boss does. Per Paul Cotcher of Red Star Scale Models, the price has been set at $166. Yep. You read that right.

WHAT THE FUCK HOBBY BOSS?

That’s more than TWICE the price of the Su-27.

Apparently they feel they can charge this because of the demand for the subject.

Well, fuck them.

Anybody who’s followed this blog for any length of time, or followed my builds or many comments elsewhere knows that I’m generally not one to complain about the price of modern kits. In fact I’ll happily pay more for excellent detail, engineering and fit. I have zero problem rewarding good execution and evident passion.

But $166? Twice the price of what’s a very largely similar kit? For a kit that’s totally missed the ball on its subject’s defining feature?

Hobby Boss has done the impossible. They’ve got me doing something I swore I would not do again. Actively consider a Kitty Hawk kit.

Thanks a lot, assholes.

Back in April, I posted a lengthy analysis of Tamiya’s 1/32 release patterns (LINK). If you have’t read it yet, I highly recommend it to at least get a sense of what the precedents are.

In that post, I put forward three predictions (among others):

1. We would not see a new 1/32 Tamiya kit this past summer
2. A second Mosquito variant – likely a B.IV or NF.II – would be announced this fall, likely at the All Japan Hobby Show
3. The next 1/32 subject will be announced in April 2017, shown publicly at the Shizouka show in May, and released later in the summer

The first has borne out. But it’s the second I want to talk about.

Because I’m starting to think we’re not going to get a second Mosquito kit. That the FB.VI will be a one and done.

Why?

Because the All-Japan Hobby Show, the show where Tamiya unveiled its last two 1/32 “variants” – the F4U-1A and the Pacific Mustang, has just come and gone.

It was a busy show for Tamiya. They showed off not only their new 1/48 F-14A, but their new 1/24 Acura NSX, a new Kawasaki Ninja H2R bike kit, and an out-of-nowhere new-tool 1/35 M40 Big Shot that, honestly, looks really damn nice.

But…there was no Mosquito B.IV or NF.II in sight.

Now…it is possible that Tamiya is waiting. Maybe to let their F-14 and other new releases have the limelight.

The Spitfire XVI was first announced, after all, in November 2010, well after the late September timeframe of the F4U-1A Corsair and Pacific P-51.

So it’s totally possible that we could turn around tomorrow, or two weeks from now, with word of Tamiya’s next Mossie.

But I’m starting to doubt it.

It’s time to consider that maybe – and maybe even probably – there will not be another Mosquito.

Seems impossible? Seems absurd given how little tweaking it’d take?

Well where’s that 1/32 F-16D? Where’s that F4U-1D Corsair? Spitfire Mk.V or Mk.XIV?

Tamiya has a shitty history with filling in variants – they’re like the anti-Dragon. We’ve known it for years. Where’s the obvious late-block P-47D with the tail fillet? Where’s the early-block P-51D without it? F4F-3 Wildcat? Any of the four-bladed Corsairs?

The signs are there in 1/48 scale, in 1/72 scale, in older 1/32 kits (look at the Phantom family…).

Tamiya sucks at variants, and they very rarely go back to “fill in”. The only instance I can think of is the retooled 1/48 Zeros – but those were replacing some of Tamiya’s oldest efforts.

Where does that leave Tamiya’s 1/32 efforts?

It leaves them exactly where they are now. Tamiya’s Zeros, Spits, Mustangs, Corsairs and their Mosquito are among the best kits on the planet. If we only get one Mossie variant it’s not going to change that.

And next summer, we’ll get something new to salivate over.

I’m still predicting either a P-47 or Me 262 if the established precedents hold.

If they don’t?

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tamiya veer away from World War II. Whatever they do – it would be in keeping with their general approach though – a highly popular subject that would sell at volume and that would be sufficiently large and complex enough to justify a pricetag well north of $100.

If they’re going to left field us like that, I think the smart money would be on a new 1/32 F-14A Tomcat. Similar to the one-two punch of new 1/32 and 1/48 F-16s back in 2007/8. Their current F-14 dates back to 1980 and is far and away the weakest of their 1/32 lineup. And it’s honestly hard to think of another jet that would sell at a similar level of gangbusters.

I know I’ve written something like this before. But some recent subject-hunting has pissed me off all over again. So here are some kits that should exist (or exist in a higher quality tooling than the cartoon trash that’s technically available today).

In no particular order.

1/32 Allison-engined Mustangs – That’s right, the P-51, P-51A, and A-36. Make it fucking happen. While they were completely  eclipsed by the Merlin ‘Stangs, these early variants tore shit up in North Africa and Italy and deserve better than the Hobbycraft kit you can’t even find anymore.

1/32 Curtiss P-40F and P-40L “Desert Hawk” – Speaking of North Africa, Hasegawa makes a P-40E, P-40M and P-40N, which is great if you get all excited about the South Pacific and CBI theaters. But in North Africa and Italy, the Merlin-engined P-40F and L were the mounts of choice for the USAAF until P-47s and P-51s came onto the scene.

1/48 RF-4C Phantom – Recce version of the F-4C with a modified nose to hold the camera goodies. Like most recce aircraft, the RF-4C stayed in service well after most other Phantom variants were sent to the boneyard or the scrapyard. It also played a significant role in Desert Storm, and would be a simple extension for a kitmaker with an already solid F-4C Phantom. Cough…Academy…cough.

1/48 F-4G Phantom – What’s cooler than a Desert Storm-era recce Phantom? A Desert Storm-era  Wild Weasel Phantom. The Hasegawa offering is dated and sad.

1/32 Spitfire Mk.Vc – Jesus. Why does everyone always make the wrong Spitfires? The Vb is interesting, but when you start going on a hunt for Spitfire Vs, it seems that at least half of the really great references that show up are sporting the C wing.

1/35 AH-64 Apache – I know people bitch about helicopters in 1/35 scale and not 1/32 (aside from Revell), but get over it. Between Academy and Trumpeter and Dragon that’s what we’ve got. And one thing we don’t have in that scale? The best helicopter gunship in the world.

1/48 or 1/35 Kamov Ka-52 “Alligator” – Helicopters in general are egregiously underrepresented in kit and aftermarket selection – and Russian helicopters in particular get far too little attention. This twin-seater would be an awesome subject to build, but alas…no dice.

1/48 Su-25 Frogfoot – Yes, there’s a Revell kit. And it’s…not great. We can do better. I’d be stunned if Trumpeter or AMK or someone doesn’t have this sucker in their roadmap.

1/32 A-4E and A-4M Low-Viz Decals – Yes, I get it. 1/32 jets get the absolute shaft when it comes to decal selection. A lot of the great 1/48 players like Furball just don’t even touch 1/32. But to date, guess how many low-viz marking options exist for 1/32 Scooters? That’s right – ZERO.

1/32 Late-Variant Corsairs – Look. I love Tamiya’s F4U-1 and -1A Corsairs. There’s something lithe and lethal about the WWII-era Corsairs for sure. But I also dig the hell out of the chunkier post-war, Korean-era Corsairs. The Corsairs that transitioned from dogfighters to bomb-chucking, rocket-slinging close air support badasses. And don’t even talk to me about Trumpeter’s shitty F4U-4. We can do better. And better should include F4U-4Bs, F4U-5Ns, AU-1s and a French F4U-7 just for giggles.

My taste in armor subjects has evolved substantially since I got back into the hobby – away from World War II and toward the tail end of the Cold War. Judging by the kits that have been arriving on the scene over the last few years, I’m not alone in that shift, either.

Newcomers Meng, Takom and Rye Field have been leading the charge, and Trumpeter has not been quiet, either, rolling out a very nice assortment of Russian T tanks and their associated platform extensions, as well as all manner of heavy launch trucks, missiles and artillery. Tamiya’s focus on WWII Sherman platforms seems a bit out of place, and meanwhile Dragon keep churning out German subject after German subject.

For some reason over the summer, I got a bug up my ass to build Takom’s new Type 69-II. Now – this is not a very good tank. It’s a Chinese knockoff of the Russian T-54/55. But, it was used extensively by the Iraqi Army (and destroyed extensively by the Allied forces in Desert Storm). And that puts it right in my historical sweet spot. Besides, fun weathering challenges are always welcome around here. So it was off to the races.

Initial Construction

It can be easy to confuse Takom and Meng. Both are new on the block, and both seem to have a hard time staying out of each other’s way in terms of new subjects. I would definitely have to give Meng the edge when it comes to engineering, detail, precision etc. They bake in all kinds of goodies like excellent workable tracks, workable suspension and so on. But…to date I’ve completed one Takom kit (their Leopard C2) and gotten another into paint…more than I can say for Meng.

Takom’s approach is…simpler. The Type 69-II lacks workable suspension, and the tracks supplied with the kit are the frustrating glue-and-wrap indy links that I just refuse to work with. The road wheels could benefit from larger mounting points and poly bushings instead of the nubs you have to glue them to.

The road wheels themselves are a source of frustration, too. Takom put all kinds of ribbing on the “contact patch” area of the tires, and that has to be sanded down. They also came close to greatness by molding the rubber portion separate from the wheels themselves, but then threw it all away by putting the wheel rims on the rubber “ring” portions. Ugh.

But once you get above the wheels, things improve, and I would say the upper hull and turret remind me quite a bit of old-school Tamiya armor. That is to say, it builds fast and it builds easy.

As such there’s just…not much to say about it.

Masterclub Tracks

Glue-together indy links are just something I refuse to deal with, so I opted for some metal Masterclub tracks. While they are nice and easier to work with than Friuls, thanks to the use of resin track pins, my set came with flash for miles. This cost me several nights and nerve endings in my thumbs removing all of the excess.

Once the tedious buildup is done, though, they look pretty slick.

Note the overdone ribbing on the wheel contact patches

Light Scratchwork

Beyond the general build-up, the specific Type 69-II I’m aiming at has a few touches that aren’t included in the kit. Thus…scratchbuilding!

The first is the replacement light guard. If you look at the tank’s right fender, you’ll see the curved, diamond-plate guard that is standard on these things. The left guard looks to be something of a DIY replacement.

The second is the smoke pipes. These go into a box welded/bolted to the exhaust, and extend forward to the front of the tank. The idea, from what I can gather, is to direct smoke from the exhaust forward as sort of a poor man’s smokescreen. Anyway, it’s a cool detail I couldn’t resist tackling.

The light guard was easy enough. Just strips of evergreen cut to approximate size and then trimmed up.

The pipes were a bit of a different challenge. I decided early on I wanted to use metal tubing – but the elbows were a concern. Nobody makes elbows this small, and bending and cutting metal tubing at such sizes is beyond my abilities/patience. So I opted to use styrene rod.

My first attempt – cutting rod at a 45° angle, reversing it at gluing it – looked alright, but didn’t match the curvier elbow typically seen with piping.

Unsatisfied with that, I went back, heated some styrene rod over a candle, and then smash-bent it on the edge of some shelving. Much better. A few cuts, some drilling out of the ends, and I had my elbows.

To make the elbows look a bit more authentic and replicate the flanged ends, I wrapped some Aizu tape around and then locked it in place with some extra thin super glue.

With that and some rather unremarkable work to add in a few additional details, it was time to move on to the main event – painting.

In Part 2, I’ll be walking through what will be the fairly involved paintwork for the Type 69-II. Even though it’s a monotone finish, there’s going to be a lot more to it than just spraying Sand and calling it a day.

It’s always great fun to dig into Tamiya’s release patterns and try to make some predictions about where we might be heading. I’ve written on this topic plenty of times before – most recently HERE – and the general precedents have been holding for some time. Broadly, in TL;DR terms:

• New 1/32 subjects come in the summer of odd-numbered years. Spitfire in ’09, Mustang in 2011, Corsair in 2013, and Mosquito in 2015. So we’re due for something new this next summer.
• Variants follow in even-numbered years  – with the exception of the Mosquito, which I’m starting to think won’t see a variant release.
• Subjects all exist in some fashion in their 1/48 catalog. The only real exception is the Spitfire – and that’s an exception in variants, not in subject.
• Tamiya’s 1/32 releases have been coming out in the same chronological order as their 1/48 releases, albeit skipping aircraft like the Dewoitine D.520 that would be a long-shot for 1/32 release.
• Tamiya’s subject choices have been of iconic aircraft with enough detail potential and bulk to justify the $100-plus pricetags.

Based on these precedents, I’ve been predicting that 2017 will give us either a P-47 or Me 262. 

But…recent signs may point to that precedent shifting.

Highway to the…

Earlier this year, Tamiya dropped their first jet since their lauded F-16, a 1/48 Grumman F-14A Tomcat.

The kit has some minor frustrations in terms of detail and limitations on which F-14A production blocks you can build out of the box, but engineering and fit-wise, it’s a simply wonderful kit.

Now…it’s not likely…but it’s within the realm of possibility that they may stray from props for their next 1/32 kit, and drop a new-tool F-14 on us instead.

If you’re not aware, Tamiya has already done a 1/32 Tomcat – but the tool dates to 1980, making it nearly as old as I am. It’s generally regarded as Tamiya’s weakest 1/32 kit.

“But Tamiya never goes back and revisits old subjects” you might say. And that’s largely true, with one exception. Not so many years ago, they released two brand-new 1/48 A6M Zero kits to replace another ancient tooling.

So…it could happen.

Another Wrinkle

While most of the buzz around Tamiya this year has focused on the new Tomcat and 1/24 Acura NSX, they just very recently announced another 1/48 kit, set to release toward the end of the year – a Ki-61 Hien.

Now this is pretty remarkable on its own – I think the last time Tamiya released two new-tool 1/48 kits in the same year might be the P-47 and Me 262 (ironic). But there may be more going on here.

Just look at the CAD renderings. 

What the fuck is that?

Tamiya typically doesn’t go in for exposing the engines in its 1/48 inline props – I can’t think of a single one honestly – but there you have it, a Ka-40, the Japanese license-built version of the famous German DB 601.

Why does this matter?

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Tamiya’s just stepping up their 1/48 game.

Or maybe they’re twin-tooling and since they’re already doing something in 1/32, may as well put a simplified version in the 1/48 kit.

So…could Tamiya be ramping up a 1/32 Ki-61? Maybe?

Let’s Throw Some Odds

So…the way I see it, there are four distinct possibilities in play for Tamiya’s next 1/32 kit. But what’s the likelihood of any one of them happening? At this point, fuck if I know, but I’ll throw some numbers out anyway:

• P-47D Razorback – 35%
• Messerschmitt Me 262 – 20%
• F-14A Tomcat – 10%
• Ki-61 Hien – 15%
• None of the Above – 20%

Bring on May 2017!

Since the first test shots emerged, Tamiya’s new 1/48 F-14A Tomcat has been praised to the heavens. Reviews have been almost universally glowing. And to be sure, it’s a fine kit.

But now that I’m a ways into building one, I’d stop shy of calling it a great kit. Much less the OMG BEST KIT EVAR!!!! adulation that some heap upon it.

I know. There’s just no pleasing some people.

The Hedgehog

In his business books, Jim Collins goes on about the Hedgehog Model. You can read about it here if you want, but the TL;DR version is pretty simple. The hedgehog is really great at one thing – rolling up into a spiky ball that predators don’t like to bite. Businesses, by focusing on that one thing they do really, really well, succeed over the long term.

Tamiya’s hedgehog is fit. They may fuck up here and there on other things, but when you crack into a Tamiya kit you’re pretty much assured of truly wonderful fit (and the engineering that assures that).

Tamiya’s Tomcat is no exception. The engineering – and the fit that follows from it – cannot be disputed. Pieces slot together with authority and precision. There’s no guessing. There’s no hoping. Shit just fits.

And I’m not just talking about the fuselage or the cockpit – it extends to the wing glove pylons and the gear bays and the gear struts and the intake trunks.

From an assembly perspective, Tamiya’s F-14 is great.

But…

Beyond engineering and fit, Tamiya drops several balls with their Tomcat. They’re little things, but taken together they add up to a kit that falls just shy of greatness.

I’m going to address each, as well as offer up a few thoughts on how Tamiya – or the aftermarket – could address them.

The Wings

The Tamiyacat’s wings? They’re solid. Personally I’m fine with this, since unless the F-14 is literally on the catapult or landing, the slats and flaps aren’t splayed out. But it gets under some people’s britches.

Solution: This one is simple, thanks to Tamiya’s excellent spar tabs. Offer a “F-14 Premium Wing” set. Meng already does shit like this with their armor.

The Cockpit

Detail in the cockpit is…decent. And honestly, with what Tamiya’s been doing with their last several 1/32 releases, and what AMK and Eduard and Trumpeter and others have been pulling off in 1/48 recently, decent is a letdown. The knobs are clumsy and don’t really match up 100% to the real thing. The stock throttle is just a lump of plastic. The gauges on the instrument panels are tiny in their bezels.

Note: Seats and throttle are aftermarket

I mean…just compare it to Hobby Boss’ A-6E Intruder:

Solution: Despite the spartan nature of Tamiya’s efforts, engineering comes to the rescue here. Every single detail part is an insert that slots into the bare cockpit tub. The firewalls, the side consoles, the sidewalls, everything.

The door is wide open for aftermarket resin to come to the rescue. Now – the way the cockpit and the nose gear bay fit together and locate into the fuselage would be a nightmare to match in resin, but there’s no need for that. Just make new cockpit inserts. That’s probably too clever for Aires, but if Eduard isn’t already working on it, I’ll find a hat and eat it.

The Gear Bays

The gear bays – as with everything else – fit together wonderfully. But they commit the sin of completely ignoring the rat’s nest of plumbing you’ll find looking up an F-14’s skirt.

Quite the difference, no?

Solution: Honestly, given the way that elements of the gear bays are integral to other parts, full-replacement gear bays will be a shit-ton of work. More work than I’d be willing to put in at least. But the separate pieces could certainly be upgraded, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Eduard try to tackle of some of this via photo etch (shudder).

Version Control

The F-14A went through several production blocks, with small-but-noticeable tweaks throughout. The main ones were different gun vents, the addition of tail stiffeners, ECM antenna bulges under the wing gloves, and the addition of the TCS chin pod. None of these were included in the kit, which is just fucking maddening.

Then again, Hobby Boss’ F-14A doesn’t have a TCS pod, either.

Right now, your only options for upgrades are either stealing shit out of another kit (like the Hobby Boss F-14B for the TCS pod) or buying some less-than-stellar resin from Steel Beach.

Personally, I don’t really give a shit about the gun vents or other smaller details, but the TCS pod is a big one. It’s a large, prominent thing on the F-14, and many earlier-block F-14As were retrofitted with them over time.

Solution: Aftermarket seems to be the way to go here. Wolfpack is generally pretty on top of various block and mid-life update sets, and I’d expect them to have something put together for later F-14As as soon as possible. Until then – I’m stealing my TCS from the Hobby Boss F-14B.

The Fucking Plastic

For some reason, Tamiya decided to abandon their usual gray for a weird, light, creamy gray plastic that gives me PTSD flashbacks to Kinetic’s F-5B and Revell’s 1/32 Bf 109G-6.

Not only does this plastic present a real pain in the ass when it comes to photography and visual definition, it also seems to have trouble curing with Tamiya Extra Thin. I had a similar issue with Tenax on Revell’s 109G-6, and the only reason Tamiya gets away with it is the staggeringly good fit. You don’t have to worry about panels pulling away, so the weird slow curing thing isn’t a huge deal. But still…give me back my normal gray plastic.

Solution: Hope Tamiya gets back to the usual plastic for their next variant. And yes, I acknowledge that this appears to be the same plastic the 1/48 F-16 is molded in. By usual plastic I mean the wonderful, darker gray seen on most of their other kits, including their recent 1/32 releases:

Very Good, Not Quite Great

So there you have it. Tamiya’s put together a very competent F-14 that nevertheless doesn’t quite knock it out of the park. Maybe an infield home run.

It seems to pop up every so often.

Sometimes it carries the bland formality of a form letter. “Dear sir or madam”. Or a concerned older person worried there might have been some kind of accident. Or the morally righteous. Or those who “just don’t think it’s needed, that’s all”, which I always imagine being said in Martin Freeman’s voice for some reason.

I’m talking, of course, about the requests, demands, tut-tuts and head shakes regarding my use of expletives on this blog.

It’s tiresome. So here, once and for all, is my response:

Fuck You

Did you walk out of the theater in disgust when Matt Damon proclaimed “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this”?

Do you basically enjoy no stand up comedy of any kind?

You poor soul.

Fuck You

We have all kinds of actual, real problems facing us in the world. Big fucking problems. Climate change and income inequality and the precarious teetering of the world economy and the rise of far-right strongman nationalist governments around the world.

Oh well, better bitch about a few shits and fucks thrown around on a modeling blog.

Fuck You

Here’s the thing. In the most reductionist terms, I write for a living. And when I write for clients, I get to do super-fun things like adopt their brand voice and refer to their style guide and adhere to their messaging architecture.

I love it. But it can be a bit stifling.

That’s part of why I started this blog several years ago. Yeah, it was mostly my little corner of the internet where I could geek out about models, but it was also a sandbox. A place where I didn’t – and don’t – have to adhere to some other brand voice or editorial style. Where I can play and try things that clients are often too hesitant to go for. Where I can plan how I want, write how I want, and not have to balance an editorial calendar against the editorial calendars of five other divisions and six other agencies.

A place where I can do whatever the fuck I want.

So, in the words of the great Rage Against the Machine,

Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I know, I know. It’s been a little while since Round 2. There are lots of reasons – like laziness, work, wanting to actually build things – but I also wanted to give a bit of time for new releases to somewhat refresh themselves. And have they ever – Round 3 may prove to be the most difficult vote yet.

Or like Round 1 and Round 2, one or two kits will leave all the others in the dust.

Housekeeping Stuff

What’s the deal with these reviews? Check out the REVIEWS PAGE, MANIFESTO and FAQ is you want to get up to speed.

Starting with Round 2, some changes have been implemented to the voting process. You can read up on them HERE. Basically – if you vote for the kit that ends up winning, some portion of those votes will be “retired”.

Want to contribute to the effort and get on board the Round 3 selection train? Visit the FundRazer link:

Okay, okay, enough housekeeping. Let’s get on to the Round 3 contenders.

Round 3 – Fight!

Here are your tributes –

1. 1/72 Airfix B-17G Flying Fortress
2. 1/48 Airfix P-40B Tomahawk
3. 1/48 Hobby Boss Su-27 Flanker
4. 1/32 HK Models B-17E/F Flying Fortress
5. 1/48 Kitty Hawk Su-17/22 Fitter
6. 1/48 Meng P-51D Mustang
7. 1/32 Special Hobby Yak-3
8. 1/48 Hobby Boss Su-34 Fullback
9. 1/35 Takom King Tiger
10. 1/35 Tamiya M40
11. 1/48 Zoukei Mura F-4J Phantom II
12.  1/2700 Zvezda Imperial Star Destroyer

Voting is live now (Friday 11/25/16) – so if you’ve contributed, keep an eye on your inbox! And if you want to have a say, you can contribute HERE.

2016 is definitely a year of, uh, unexpected elections. Let’s just leave that at that.

The Contributor-Funded Kit Reviews Round 3 vote, it seems, is no exception.

After the Round 1 and 2 votes saw the eventual winners pull into a commanding lead relatively early on, Round 3 was different. The early favorite fell off late, and two other subjects remained neck and neck. Trading places as votes came in.

For a while, it seemed that Kitty Hawk’s upcoming Su-17/22 Fitter would squeak it out. And then HK’s big B-17E/F nosed ahead. And then it went back, and forth.

And then they fucking tied. 106 to 106.

Well. Shit. I hadn’t planned for this.

Jesus take the wheel?

There have been a few suggestions to flipping a coin or other random-selection mechanisms. No. Maybe it’s the way I’m wired, I don’t know, but I’ve never been a fan of turning things over to random chance. Random chance has enough say in our lives as it is.

I’m also not keen on a run-off, because that’s another fucking mail merge to set up, and limiting it to those who voted the first time out would require some Excel formulas that I don’t want to work out on a weekend.

Determining the winner

So what’s going to determine the winner?

Two things.

First, a bastardized bicameralism. The US government divides its legislative branch into two bodies. The House of Representatives is based on proportional representation. States with more people have more representatives. Then there’s the Senate, where every state has two senators, and most of them are assholes.

To determine the winner, I’m going to look not only at the vote total, but the voter total. My main voting system is $1 = 1 vote, but for runoff purposes, a 1 vote per person approach will indicate which subject has a broader base of support.

Second, which one I feel is more in need of a rigorous build review. With both the Fly Hurricane and Kinetic F/A-18C, I feel like there was enormous benefit to covering how the things actually come together. If you’re going to build one, it helps to know where to pay extra attention or drink extra alcohol.

And the winner is…

The winner, on both counts, is the Kitty Hawk Su-17/22 Fitter.

In terms of the “popular vote”, the Fitter musters 61% of the vote to the B-17’s 39%. Essentially – more people are interested in seeing the Fitter reviewed.

In terms of which is more in need of review, I have to concede, that’s the Fitter as well. For a few reasons.

• The HK B-17E/F definitely skirts my own “no warmed over variants releases” rule. Given the interest in the subject that a lot of people have (I’m more a B-24J fan…), and the retooling effort HK went through moving from the B-17G, I gave it a pass. But we already know HK’s B-17 is a pretty sweet kit.
• There are lots of B-17 kits. There are fuck all Su-17 kits. Well, there’s a terrible ancient kit, but you get the idea.
• The Fitter is a Kitty Hawk kit, and we know what that means.
• The B-17 is so size prohibitive in 1/32 that it has a limited audience, and that audience is going to buy it or not buy it on factors other than me dropping F-bombs on YouTube. Yeah there’s a Car & Driver-reviews-a-Ferrari quality to it I guess, but I’m not Car & Driver.

So. The Su-17/22 it is.

A few years ago, I found a screaming deal on a gently used Iwata CM-B Custom Micron.

Did I need it? Not really. But I’d been hearing Custom Microns talked about in reverent tones and was curious if the hype was real.

Was it ever.

I’m something of an airbrush whore, so I’ve sprayed a lot of different brands and types. And quite frankly, none of them were really any better than my trusty Iwata HP-C Plus. Even the vaunted Harder & Steenbeck Infinity.

The Custom Micron changed that. The atomization, the trigger feel, the relatively broad engagement point that makes it more feasible to spray consistently small – all of them combine to deliver a spraying experience that no other airbrush can match.

It’s so good that I use it for 85-90% of all painting duties.

The thing is, though, Custom Microns are not cheap.

So when I caught wind of this Gunze PS-770, I was immediately intrigued. Many of Guzne’s airbrushes are certainly at the very least kissing cousins of various Iwatas. And the PS-770 appears for all the world like a Gunze take on the Custom Micron CM-C+, with the .18mm needle/nozzle combo from the CM-B.

But instead of $400-500, the PS-770 can be snagged for $200-250.

Is it a Custom Micron in Gunze clothing, or is it too good to be true?

Well – I had to find out, so I bought one and put it to the test.

Check out the video below to see how it went:

For the most part, I love the hell out of my photo table. Yes, it’s big and unwieldy and attracts bugs in the summer months, but the nice even lighting and the ability to use uplighting make it all worthwhile.

It’s an excellent way to showcase my builds.

But…I do miss the option to shoot on a different backdrop – like black.

Why? Simple. White is rather strong, tonally, and can introduce a form of tonal crush all its own, obscuring subtle tonal variations in a paint finish. With certain tones – particularly grays – it can also make accurate white balance a pain in the ass, and thanks to the white plexiglass not being a pure white, can make certain grays look too blue, or conversely make itself look too red.

Case in point – the Tamiya F-14 I’m currently working my way through. Take this shot…in which the Dark Ghost Gray seems both too blue, and too dark:

After completely resampling the white balance, I took another go at it…and was happier.

But now the white looks…dingy…and the gray is not pulling through nearly all of the tonal variation going on.

But when you put it on black…

At the exact same exposure – the gray looks far, far more tonally correct, and the subtle variations across the surface more apparent.

The problem is finding a good black backdrop

Posterboard works…decently…but it’s small and confines angles. Bigger posterboards are too stiff – and paper products just do not last long in the garage environment (thanks, humidity).

Photo backdrops that are made out of shit like muslin are right out – those are great for portraits, but not great for a photo table, where the grain shows through.

Ideally I’d be able to find something like a nice big piece of clear, flimsy acrylic – but I’ve only ever found those in clear – and attempts to paint them a black that’s opaque never seem to go well.

I thought I’d found an interesting solution with a big sheet of adhesive vinyl…I mean it does take pretty damn good pictures…

But it also ended up creasing like a bastard on the slope of the photo table, leading to very obvious reflective areas and making me question its durability for ongoing use and storage cycles.

So what say you, readers? Know of a wonderful backdrop material that won’t turn to mush in moderate humidity, that won’t attract every mote of dust and then refuse to let it go? That’s big enough to allow freedom of shot angles (approximately 4 feet by 3 feet would probably work)?

Any ideas? Because I’m running out.

I think there must be some kind of modeling corollary to Murphy’s Law that says “over the course of a build, something will go wrong”.

Looking back, I feel like there’s been something with every kit I’ve built.

Sometimes it’s been butterfingers – the time I spilled CA on the AccuMini Dauntless or sloshed neat lacquer thinner all over the Ki-84‘s wing while it was salted up for weathering.

Sometimes it’s been unfortunate tape-lift, like on my Trumpeter P-47.

Sometimes it’s acts of nature, like the time a gentle breeze caused my 1/32 Tamiya Corsair to slide off its stand, off the desk for a hard landing on the garage floor?

And sometimes it’s betrayal by shitty decals.

That was my experience with the Italeri F-104 and Zotz decals. Italeri totally botched the roundel sizing for the Italian schemes, so I opted to give the Zotz ones a go. And they were thick and did not settle and looked like shit. So…I got to strip them and repaint.

Well, now it’s the F-14’s turn.

The F-14 Meets Its Fuckup

I’ve been working on Tamiya’s 1/48 F-14A Tomcat for a few months now, and apart from some small frustrations, it’s proven to be a rather good kit.

The thing is, I’ve been hellbent on depicting a specific aircraft – “Rage 207” of VF-24.

Thanks to a handy Furball sheet, I had almost all the markings I needed for this particular ship. The only things missing were the particular aircraft numbers – the modex numbers on the wings, tails and nose. That and the “USS Kitty Hawk” on the glove vanes.

So…I printed some of my own and got to work.

Along the way, I managed to mess up one of the VF-24 decals on the lower strakes…so I went ahead and made custom replacements.

The decals went down wonderfully.

Except that some of the custom decals were just woefully thick, and too fragile to take efforts to settle them down without smudging and smearing. I also faced a few other hurdles – areas of the F-14 that had been primed with Badger Stynylrez seemed to suffer some kind of degradation under Mr. Mark Setter and Mr. Mark Softer. And something else…

Midway through the decal work, I became aware of a Fightertown decal sheet depicting a later Rage 207. Not quite what I needed, but it had all the modex numbers. And considering how prominent the wing and nose numbers are, I decided I’d rather put my trust in Fightertown than my troublesome custom numbers. They were great, but they did degrade a very tiny bit under Mr. Mark Softer. Still…everything was looking pretty good…

And then I put down a sealing coat and the thick custom decals on the strakes just…fuck.

While we’re at it, the small 07s on the tails are also not great.

Clearly, Testors decal paper is bullshit. And clearly, I need to fix these things.

The Fix Is In

So…the need to fix this bullshit is understood. But how?

Plan A – Build and Sand

When I was finishing out the prop on Trumpeter’s Dauntless, the Hamilton Standard logos provided with the kit were just bullshit. So I stole some much better ones from Tamiya’s F4U-1A Corsair.

Thing is…the Corsair decals are Tamiya’s usual ultra-thick variety. And so they went down nicely, but were very obviously decals.

The solution? Build up a heavy coat of Gunze GX100 Gloss, which has more heft to it than your average bear, and then sand back so that the blades were level. It worked really well.

But prop blades are one thing…and if you look again at the VF-24, there’s some obvious discoloration at work as well.

Sanding it back would help a bit. But the discolored square would remain. That and if you look at the swoosh on the strake…it doesn’t carry all the way up. Which I’ll admit has bugged me – since the real world example does:

Plan B – Strip It

So if GX100 won’t get me there, what will?

Simple. I’m going to do some targeted stripping, just like I did with the F-104.

What about the markings? Well – recall that I put the strake decals down before I even knew about the Fightertown sheet. Which means I’ve got a leftover set of the strake VF-24s and the tail 07s.

What I don’t have are the swooshes. But…I’ve got a cutting machine now. And while I’m still struggling with tighter detail, cutting a swoosh mask is absolutely within the realm of doable.

So, that’s the plan. Now…to execute.

Kitty Hawk’s new 1/48 Su-17 has hit the market, and now that the plastic’s in the hands of various reviewers, thoughts are starting to trickle out.

My own copy – destined to be the third subject in the Contributor-Funded Kit Review series – should be arriving on Monday. The timing is fortuitous – my long, long build of Tamiya’s F-14 Tomcat is in the home stretch and should be wrapping up probably Sunday or Monday, so I’ll be able to crack into the build review pretty much the moment the Fitter shows up.

So close now…

Personally, I want this kit to be awesome. I’m pulling for it, and I’m pulling for Kitty Hawk.

But I have my reservations, because come on, this is Kitty Hawk we’re talking about. They can do some good detail, and they can do some good kits as well (I really enjoyed the AH-1Z Viper), but more often than not, they shoot themselves in the foot with somehow overdone-but-poorly-thought-out engineering and the aggravating fit issues that engineering causes.

Anyway, that’s where my head’s at. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. But apparently I don’t even have to do a build review at all! Because in a guest post over on Scale Model Soup, Red Star Models’ Paul Cotcher has proclaimed that any negative take on the kit is not only something he disagrees with, but is also, get this – incorrect.

Subjective vs. Objective

Okay, first of all, I’m not really sure how an impression of a kit can be incorrect. We’re dealing with inherently subjective takes. Like film reviews or car reviews. There are some objective points – how long a movie is, who stars in it, how fast a car goes from 0-60 and so on – but there’s so much subjectivity wrapped into it that it’s not a matter of correct or incorrect.

Even accuracy…no kit is 100% accurate. Something will be off. So it becomes a question of inaccuracy tolerance, which is a subjective thing. The threshold for what you’re willing to accept may be different from mine. Hell – mine varies based on the subject and how many fucks I give about it. I can live with an A-7’s intake being a bit too “square”, but I will get pretty punchy about small goofs on a P-47.

Different Strokes

I’ve written about it before in a number of ways – but, basically, different people like different shit. When you think about the four main “pillars” of any kit – detail, accuracy, engineering and fit – you have people who literally only care about accuracy, and you have others who are interested in engineering, or only have eyes for fit.

There’s also what I’ve taken to calling the “Primer Divide”. Think about what you like the most about modeling. Does that aspect come before or after you lay down primer? Some people love the building and scratchbuilding aspects. For me, it’s painting. I do enjoy building, but it’s definitely more of a means to an end. So a kit that gets a scratchbuilder’s juices flowing may leave me completely turned off, and vice versa.

Again…it’s subjective.

“Here’s Why You’re Wrong”

So why does Paul declare negative takes on the Kitty Hawk Su-17 incorrect? In his own words:

Here is why the negative point of view, relatively speaking, is incorrect. Let me make this VERY simple:

You ready?

Gonna be hard for some of you to comprehend, but…

IT’S NOT THE OEZ/KP/KOPRO/KARAYA/EDUARD KIT.

End of discussion. Somehow we’ve gotten ourselves into the practice of comparing every kit to some idealized non-existent kit that can never be achieved.

Okay, I’m going to make this distinction right now.

Just because a kit is better than a shitty, older kit, does not mean that it is a good kit.

He goes on:

We need to stop comparing against unrealistic ideals and maybe look at some more realistic comparisons – like what else is out there in the 1/48 Su-17 space? Here’s a clue: It’s that project I so lovingly described above. It was a beast to build, it was full of accuracy issues, and to get it to a similar standard, would cost three to four times as much as this new kit will cost. Fair and full disclosure – there is a Hobby Boss kit coming of the same subject – not sure when, but it’s in their catalog. Maybe that will fix the canopy issue, but from what we’ve seen of early test displays, it’s not as accurate as the Kitty Hawk kit. Beyond that, you’re hoping that somebody else does a better job, but at this point you’re hoping for something that’s FAR down the road, and nothing more than a wish at this point. Kitty Hawk, Hobby Boss, Ideal Future Kit or KP – that’s your choice.

Blinders On

Here’s the way I see it. Paul is seeming to imply that we should only look at kits on a single axis – how they stack up to kits of the same subject.

If you’re laser-focused on one subject, that’s fine. Over in SMCG, we’ve had two different discussions in the last few days about the “best” 1/32 Bf 109. In such a case, a single-axis comparison is worthwhile.

But it’s no guarantee of a good kit. I mean – I’d say the Revell, Hasegawa and Trumpeter late-model 109s are roughly equal, with each managing to do great in some areas and really shit the bed in others – but none of them hold a candle to Tamiya’s Corsair or HK’s Do 335 or even other kits from those three brands themselves.

And that’s the 109. What about something that’s legitimately sad-sack? Who makes the best 1/48 F7U Cutlass? Or LaGG-3? Or A-36? Calling something the “best X in this scale” is damning with faint praise if the competition is either awful or nonexistent. It’s a big fish/small pond situation.

The thing is, though, modeling is not a single axis hobby. Every time we start a new kit, we have a choice in what to build. Those kits compete for our interest, attention and dollars. And subject matter is a powerful draw, sure, but it’s not the only factor.

So this is where I like to introduce a second axis. If the x-axis is kits-of-a-certain-subject, then the y-axis is the standards of contemporary kits.

What does that mean? Simple. By today’s standards, the old Monogram P-47 is pretty sad. It’s been left in the dust by newer kits. But if you compare it to its contemporaries, for its time it was a fantastic kit.

The same holds true today. Yeah, you can hold up Kitty Hawk’s Fitter against a 20-year-old POS kit and declare it the best Fitter ever. But it’s also important to consider how it stacks up to other kits that are being released around it. How does it compare to Kinetic’s F/A-18C and Hobby Boss’ Su-27 and Tamiya’s F-14 and AMK’s MiG-31 and so on?

Because kits don’t exist in a fucking vacuum.

It’s…silly. It’d be like looking at, I don’t know, a Honda Civic. And judging the current Civic to be a good car because it has more power and gets better fuel economy and has better features than a 1995 Civic.

Would you go out and buy a new Sony HDTV because it’s so much better than the TVs they were making in 1992? Of course not. You’d shop it against Toshiba and LG and so on. Just like you’d shop a Civic against a Mazda3, Ford Focus and other similar cars.

Nobody Expects Perfection

To me this idea of some kind of Platonic ideal of a model kit is a total strawman. It’s kind of the opposite of the “well at least there’s a kit of it” argument.

I don’t see it as people wanting a perfect kit. I see negative perspectives on Kitty Hawk and Italeri and others who seem to struggle in various ways as based on frustration. Frustration that they tackle cool and interesting subjects, but tackle them in a lackluster way as compared to contemporary competitors.

Now, to be fair, there is certainly a “gotcha” mentality among some of the red arrow brigade, who love to point out any minute slip-ups, but honestly, accuracy is not and never has been the reason I see people scoff at Kitty Hawk. Most builders seem willing to forgive or correct small accuracy errors. But after being lured in time and time again by great subject choices only to face six-part fuselages and terrible fit and seams in bad locations and so on…as George W Bush once said:

The Ball is in Kitty Hawk’s Court

There’s a lot of excitement at the prospect of a good Su-17 kit. But there’s also a lot of apprehension that Kitty Hawk is the one making it. Especially with a Hobby Boss kit on the horizon, and the possibility of still more entering the fray in the near-to-mid future.

Even with all the hate that I throw Kitty Hawk’s way, I want nothing more than for them to knock this one out of the park. Because I want more good kits – and not just good relative to a sad sack from decades ago – but good relative to what else is hitting the market.

Fingers crossed that Kitty Hawk will deliver this time.

Back in the fall of 2015, I conducted an interview with Baris Tansoy, founder of the then-largely-unknown Tanmodel. This was just as they were starting to really share details of their RF-84F Thunderflash, which has gone on to earn plenty of praise for not only its design, engineering and fit, but accuracy as well (see my review HERE).

Since then, we’ve become friends and I’ve been fortunate enough to be privy to some really cool developments going on behind the scenes. Now that Tanmodel has pulled back the curtain on its next kit – a 1/32 scale Su-33 Sea Flanker – I’m thrilled that I can finally share some of the coolness.

After our 2015 interview, Baris and I decided it could be a fun format to revisit – so here are some questions – and answers – about the Su-33 project. Enjoy!

DM: Your publicly available roadmap has been available for some time – and the Buccaneer and 1/32 F-5 Freedom Fighter and F-4 Phantom have all drawn a lot of excitement. Where did the Su-33 come from? Why it? Why now?

We received numerous new project suggestions after we launched our RF-84F kit. Everybody thought we had a challenging project list; however they counted on us because we used 3D laser scanning technology. We have an expert design team and modeller friends throughout the world with whom we have good relationships.

Su-33 aircraft are still operational and allow limited access to information. We thought that this would be the most challenging project in order to demonstrate what Tanmodel brand is capable of. We think that we made a perfect design (especially in terms of modelling engineering).

DM: The RF-84F Thunderflash and the other kits you have in development were all 3D laser-scanned. Is the same true of the Su-33?

We of course did not have the chance to scan the Su-33 aircraft with 3D laser (because access to the aircraft is limited – ed). Then we reviewed more than 4000 pictures and numerous technical drawings. We checked every part maybe 100 times.

We are very excited that we will have the remarks of our modeller by sharing our design with them prior to production.

DM: Were any lessons from the development of the RF-84F applied to the Su-33?

We applied some solutions like the fuselage-wing joint channel, special windshield design, part refractions away from panel lines in our Su-33 design like we did in our RF-84F kit.

Every windscreen should be designed this way. It’s a little thing that really does improve the build experience.

We think that these solutions will be liked a lot. We also applied some different designs which have never seen before.

In addition, our Su-33 kit will have the biggest one piece intakes in the industry.

DM: Buildability is always a hot topic – but it seems to be moreso recently, particularly with the release of Tamiya’s F-14. Can you discuss any particular areas of the kit where buildability led to some interesting engineering solutions? 

The only thing you need to consider is the high applicability of the kit when you create such a gigantic kit design. Modellers never want any part to get damaged when working on the kit in this scale. (Too true – nothing more frustrating than being forced to install parts early that will doubtless get knocked around during construction and painting – like gear struts). We are modellers as well and we considered the size of the model in the design phase. For example, horizontal stabilizers are the last parts to mount on the kit.

The spade support on the nose gear strut should provide a convenient and sturdy installation.

We also designed the support parts in order to avoid bending of the upper and lower fuselage parts, and provided Tanmodel-specific specially designed parts for the details of raised rivet parts and vertical stabilizers at the tail area. We kept part refractions (where parts join – ed) away from natural panel lines for nose part, and added design-specific special support parts in order to avoid elevation differences in this part.

Essentially, by keeping the part joins away from natural panel lines, seams can be cleaned up without sacrificing and having to restore the kit’s surface detail.

DM: The kit renders show the Su-33 with the wings folded. How are you approaching the hinges to maximize detail while still ensuring strength and (hopefully) ease of assembly?

We made a great design for the opened-closed wing option to modellers. We already designed the design prior to starting the project and solved this issue during pre-design phase. You will understand what we mean when you start building the model.

DM: Any interesting provisions for wings extended? Hobby Boss provided some interesting spar pieces in their 1/48 A-6 Intruder that proved very helpful in this regard, but for some reason Trumpeter left them off the 1/32 Intruder.

Fuselage parts are 2 separate parts – upper and lower. You need to make a choice during construction: folded or flat (open) wings. Thanks to our 3D design, modellers will have the best outcome whichever way they choose to go. 

From this view it looks like the extended wings will have some nice spar supports

DM: Great Wall Hobby and AMK have made splashes with excellent one-piece injection molded missiles. Granted – that’s in 1/48 scale – but will we be seeing any interesting approaches to the armaments?

This is a 32 scale kit. If we want to give one piece missile, it creates sink marks as the part will be too thick. We think that molding one-piece missiles in this scale may technically not be possible.

DM: I hear this kit will have one piece intake trunks. Can you elaborate a bit?

We reviewed similar kits before we started this project and decided that the intakes would be one piece. We knew that it would be the biggest [intake] part in the industry in terms of scale, but we are modellers too and we desired to provide you the same kind of things we wanted for ourselves. We hope to be pleased that we made this decision after the production!

DM: A lot of 1/32 kits are notorious for shipping with vinyl tires. Will Tanmodel be taking a more modeler-friendly approach?

We all agreed on the materials to be used during the production at the design phase of the design before the project. We hate vinyl tires. ☺ Usage of metal struts (for the landing gear – ed) was like an obligation, but the tires needed to be plastic.

DM: What would you say was the single biggest challenge in pulling this kit together?

If we could have used the 3D laser scanner, I think we would have suffered less. ☺

DM: I noticed that you 3D printed parts of the kit for test-fitting – can you describe the process a bit? 

We enlarged some joint pins. We are very pleased that we projected our thoughts to our design.

Due to the size limitations of 3D printing, parts had to be sliced up for test-fitting.

DM: I mentioned to a friend that we were going to be doing a follow-up on the RF-84F interview, and he said I had to ask this. So, “where the fuck is the Phantom?”

We are already working on a multi-option F-4E project. 2017 will be hot.

DM: When do you expect the Su-33 to be available?

Presumably in about 4-5 months.

Welcome to the third entry in the Contributor-Funded Kit Review series! This time out, the subject is Kitty Hawk’s new-tool 1/48 Su-17M3/M4 Fitter.

Want to skip all the pesky words and just head over to the review videos? CHECK OUT THE REVIEW PLAYLIST.

Want to just watch the closing thoughts? Fine…

Curious about contributor-funded thing, or want to see past reviews? HIT THE REVIEWS PAGE FOR MORE.

Attracting Flies

You know that old saying “you attract more flies with honey”?

It’s false.

If the conversation that’s swirled around this build review is anything to go by, you attract more flies with a steaming pile of garbage.

As this third installment in the CFKR series wraps up, I can say with 100% confidence that it has been the subject of more pissing and moaning and more apologist angst than the Hurricane and the Hornet combined. Hell, it might even outstrip the various bleats and swipes that accompanied my original proposal for this effort.

Kitty Hawk, it would seem, brings all the boys to the yard.

It’s Like a Band-Aid

You know how most reviews string you along until the very end, and then drop a “highly recommended” in your lap?

I’m not going to do that. I’m going to take a more direct approach. Tell you my take on this kit, and then we can get into the whys of how I came to my conclusion.

So here we go.

I’m not recommending Kitty Hawk’s Su-17.

In fact, I’m anti-recommending it.

Do not buy this kit. Do not reward Kitty Hawk for their ongoing sloppy, even lazy engineering.

Even if the kit’s problems can be fixed with files, sanders, scrap styrene and a fuckton of putty, they shouldn’t have to be. This isn’t a case of a difficult design where they tried their best and it was just beyond them.

This is a case of straight-up laziness. At that’s if I’m being charitable, because the other explanations for this shoddiness would be incompetence or outright disdain for their customer base.

Almost every single one of the kit’s voluminous list of problems and annoyances could have been addressed with another few weeks of QA.

Kitty Hawk has the capacity to make a good kit. The AH-1Z Viper is proof enough of that. Hell, the wings of the Su-17 are proof enough of that. They’re fantastic. And that makes the rest of the kit all the more frustrating in contrast. It’s like they just couldn’t be bothered to go that extra step.

I don’t know if it’s some extreme efficiency drive to cut costs, or just a disregard for quality and for their customers, but Kitty Hawk should be embarrassed by this kit, and equally embarrassed at the price they’re asking. Sprue Brothers is selling this engineering failure for $80. Which, for the record, is more than the street prices of the Kinetic F/A-18C Hornet, Hobby Boss Su-27, and even AMK’s MiG-31. Or if you want to switch eras, more than Wingnut Wings’ highly anticipated Sopwith Camel. It’s also not so far off the going rate for Tamiya’s F-14 Tomcat. And this kit? Does not hold a candle to any of those.

Again. Do not buy this kit. Do not perpetuate this laziness. Other new-tool Su-17s are on the horizon.

What’s So Wrong With It?

Before the evisceration continues, what does this kit get right?

Three things.

• The surface detail is pretty well done. I wouldn’t call it best-of-the-best, but it holds up well against, say, Academy’s latest efforts.
• The cockpit detail is nice, particularly in the sidewalls and side consoles.
• The wings are wonderful subassemblies and downright sublime in how they come together and slot into the fuselage. The fit is so precise that I never had to glue them into the fuselage.

Unfortunately, these flashes of competence only serve to highlight the severe deficiencies presented by the rest of the kit.

Let’s go through them.

THE LANDING GEAR – Kits with shitty gear struts annoy me. Why? Because these are detail items usually added toward the end of a build, when things have already been painted, weathered and detailed out. Ideally, struts should lock in place in as close to a plug-and-play fashion as possible.

Kitty Hawk obviously has a different philosophy.

The main struts are fussy, with tiny location dimples that will not give something gentle like PVA enough purchase to hold the gear doors and other elements in place. They also have very shallow mounting posts, and the result is perhaps the wobbliest legs of any kit I’ve ever built. Look at this thing and it starts shivering. But hey – at least the marginal wheels fit onto the struts with authority.

The nose strut is a straight-up middle finger to the plug-and-play notion. Most “double-fork” gear struts are, since they typically want you to trap the wheel before gluing the forks in place. But Kitty Hawk goes one further. Instead of molding one fork into the main strut, it leaves BOTH of the forks separate. And gives you again, tiny location dimples with which to connect everything. The top of the forks sit too wide, and the bottom…well the “axle” halves are too wide and leave giant chasms on either side of the wheel.

If I were building this piece of shit for real, I would cut the axles, drill them out, build the fork, and then use metal rod for the axle. Cap the ends with some sheet styrene discs from a punch set.

THE PYLONS – this kit’s pylons can die in a fire. The instructions get the port and starboard pylons mixed up. The inboard and mid-wing pylons don’t just have mold seams on the surfaces where they join to the wings, they have fucking plateaus. That you have to shave down inside a concave surface.

The outboard pylons have shape issues coming over the hinge bulge in the wing gloves, and this causes them to lift away from the surface to either front or back depending on where you’re applying pressure. Force both sides down with anger and adhesives, and the bottom of the pylon curves – which will present problems when the arrow-straight sub-pylons go on.

THE PLAGUE OF SPRUE GATES, SPRUE NIBS AND EJECTOR PINS – if you tried to count the grains of sand on a beach, and then tried to count the number of sprue gates, sprue nibs and ejector pins in this kit, you’d probably end up with the same number.

Kitty Hawk loves its sprue gates like Michael Bay loves explosions. Put ’em everywhere, who cares? Tree falling over? Explosion! Convex, lipped mating surface? Sprue gates! Throw them over alignment tabs! Who cares?

Kitty Hawk is the honey badger of sprue gates. It doesn’t give a shit.

The ejector pins are just as bad, popping up in ridiculous places. Like, in tiny recessed holes that are supposed to mount to other parts.

And the thing is…someone had to put them there. Someone had to design the molds and think “yes, right there, that’ll do”.

THE INTAKE – most of this review has focused on engineering and fit, but with the intake, we get to rope accuracy into the case as well.

The intake is not only poorly engineered in three different ways – it’s also inaccurate.

First, there is a plainly, obviously visible location tab right underneath the shock cone. Yes, it can be removed. But it should not be there in the first place.

Second, the kit uses two tabs with little posts on them, on either side of the shock cone, to located into the fuselage. Ignoring the inaccuracy of this for the moment, the engineering is just poor. The tabs? They do nothing. The posts? They allow the shock cone to flop up and down in a way that shock cones just don’t. Why this approach? Why not locate the thing, at a minimum, vertically?

Third, and this applies not only to Kitty Hawk but to Eduard and Trumpeter as well. It is amazingly simple to engineer one of these nose intake/shock cone aircraft (MiG-21, Su-7, Su-9 etc) in such a way that the shock cone can be dropped in at the end of a build. There are many advantages to this – chief among them being the ability to easily paint the shock cone separately, and the ability to get into the intake for cleanup and painting without damaging said shock cone. But…no one does it unless you venture into aftermarketland.

Now, to the inaccuracy. The Kitty Hawk kit completely omits a very prominent feature of the Su-17 – the intake splitter.

The splitter not only mounts the shock cone, it also routes are around the cockpit and nosegear bay. Its inclusion would have hidden any location tabs. It would have given an easy way to provision for dropping the shock cone in late in the build. And…it would have been accurate.

Even the old KoPro kit has the intake splitter.

THE DORSAL SPINE – Sure, the six-piece fuselage is bad (we’ll get to that in a moment). But it obscures something almost as noxious. The five-piece dorsal spine.

That’s right. FIVE PIECES. Take that, left side/right siders! No longitudinal joins for you!

Every single section of the spine has something stupid and easily avoidable wrong with it.

The MID SPINE? Has a sprue gate that intrudes onto one of the location tabs. Why? The part’s probably around 1.5″ long. Surely they could have located that gate anywhere else?

The FORWARD SPINE? There’s a lip, where it comes down over the rear cockpit bulkhead, that intrudes with the bulkhead! This is a pretty right area to work in, and requires careful use of a micro-chisel, file, thin sanding sticks and lots of expletives to remove. Again – it’s not that it can’t be addressed. It’s that it shouldn’t have to be in the first place.

The REAR SPINE? There’s an interior bracing piece that runs straight across the bottom of the spine halves. A straight line over a curving fuselage.

Know what happens when you put a straight line over a curve?

No wonder the rear spine seemed to have trouble seating into place.

Two snips with the sprue cutters fixes the situation, but again, this kit is just a pile of shoddy engineering that builds frustration in a compound manner. One or two goofs, no big deal. Shit like this every step of the way? It’s basically the modeling equivalent of those slow-burning Chinese torture and execution methods…water torture, death by a thousand cuts, and the like.

THE FUSELAGE – Far and away the most obvious and most discussed deficiency of the kit is the atrocious six-piece fuselage. And these discussions have basically created a microcosm of the larger furor that’s been surrounding this kit. Basically, there seem to be three sides.

First, you have the horror-stricken. “WTF?”

Second, you have the there-must-be-a-reason types. “They must have done it this way to allow for multiple variants.”

And third, you have those who immediately pivot to basic modeling skills. “Just join them left and right first.”

Here are the objective facts about the fuselage pieces:

1. The fuselage is divided into six parts, forming three sections. These are the front, extending from the nose back into the wing insert, the mid, encompassing the middle of the aircraft, and the rear, which extends basically from the speed brakes aft, and falls on the break line where the rear could be removed to service the engine.
2. This will allow for the boxing of different variants, including those Su-22s that used different engines and thus had different rear sections, as well as the twin-seat UM models.
3. The front and mid sections have a small lip to help with alignment.
4. The mid and rear sections have no joining or locating provisions of any kind. It’s a butt join.
5. The mid and rear sections have mismatched curvatures. The rear’s curve is shallower, and the top and bottom are taller than the mid section. You essentially have to squeeze the rear section from top and bottom to bring them into alignment.

Now, let’s get a bit subjective.

While the six-piece division will allow for multiple variants, it is perhaps the sloppiest, most pass-the-buck way of doing it. Somehow, other manufacturers manage to give us multiple variants of an aircraft without slicing it up like a sushi roll. Great Wall Hobby managed to throw down with whole new upper fuselages for their MiG-29 9-12, 9-13 and SMT. Hobby Boss is doing the same with their Su-27 variants, like the Su-30MKK and upcoming Su-27UB. When Revell moved on from their Bf 109G-6 to the G-10, they dropped whole new fuselage parts into the box.

And with modern injection molding, it’s entirely possible to keep things modular in the CAD and even the mold tooling stage, and then use inserts to turn those modular components into single-piece fuselage halves. This costs slightly more, but I would argue it would pay for itself in increased sales due to a better reputation.

Now. Let’s imagine that Kitty Hawk had no choice but to go with six pieces. It happens. In that case, one would think that they would put some kind of provision in place for locating the rear and mid fuselage sections. A lip, like the one assisting the front/mid join. Inserts to help locate. Anything. But they didn’t. There is literally nothing.

As to the third point, the old “basic modeling skills” saw – nobody is saying this kit can’t be built and built well. The “unbuildable” thing is a strawman, exactly as much as the “no perfect kit” argument.

A modeler’s skill (or more accurately, sets of skills) is critically important to any build, of any kit. But that is beyond the scope and point of this review. This review, like those preceding it, is focused on the kit. On what comes in the box and how well – or poorly – it does its job of being a model kit.

If you think you can take this kit and make something wonderful out of it, good for you!

But here’s the thing. There are many different modelers. There’s a broad range of skillsets and, yes, of preferences. What works for you may turn others away, and vice versa. They say there’s no accounting for taste. Well, there’s no accounting for the entire spectrum of people in this hobby, either.

What we can account for is the plastic that comes in a box that we can all purchase. That is what is under examination here. How well this kit does its job of being a kit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Compared to the old KoPro/etc kit, the Kitty Hawk is certainly more detailed and certainly wins in the wings game, where the KP kit is notoriously troublesome. But let’s be honest, that’s damning with faint praise. “Better than shit” does not equal good.

And compared to its contemporaries (and, likely, the competing new-tool Fitters on the horizon), the Kitty Hawk Su-17 falls well short in terms of engineering and fit.

If you want to build it anyway, that’s your business. As for me, I’m standing by my anti-recommendation. Don’t buy this kit. Don’t continue supporting Kitty Hawk’s slipshod engineering. It’s the only way they’ll ever change.