Aires offers a myriad of after-market parts, this being a new offering. Designed for the Italeri kit I wanted to experiment a bit to see how the parts fit on the Hasegawa kit.

The first step is to remove the Aires parts from the part carrier. This is easy to do and quite safe as the parts are not delicate. I used a Xuron part nipper to remove the parts from the carrier, trim away any flash, and then also to cut the six exhaust ports into 3 units of two ports each. That division is required to get the Aires parts to drop into place on the Hasegawa kit. As you can see in the accompanying images, the parts fit nicely and without issue.

Scale Aircraft Conversions has released replacement landing gear for the Czech Model 4814 / Encore EC48004 Douglas F3D-2 Skynight. The 17 parts supplied include the nose gear bay, nose gear, main gear, and additional retraction arms and braces. One of Ross MacMillan’s passions is the Douglas Skynight, and he spent several hours taking photos underneath one to get this set right.

A side by side evaluation of all the SAC parts shows the initial similarity with the kit parts. The nose gear bay, in addition to helping keep the Skynight on its nose gear, has been modified by including mounting points for the nose gear strut and the nose gear retraction arm. The nose gear torque link, missing in the kit, has been provided. The nose gear strut has been lengthened. The nose gear retraction arm has been modified and relocated to where it belongs.

Thank you to the great folks at Kitty Hawk Models for bringing a welcome new large-scale kit to U. S. Navy propeller aficionados. Kitty Hawk subjects are starting to fill out my collection more and more! Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work in getting us kits to review.

This new release from Kitty Hawk fills a long-standing gap in 1:32 scale early USN aircraft. The Kingfisher is represented in the scale modeling world by very old but generally still available smaller scale 1:48 and 1:72 kits, which can be upgraded and corrected by a wide variety of after-market components. However, I am unaware of any injection-molded Kingfisher kits in 1:32 scale, let alone a modern release. Bravo Kitty Hawk!

This review is a pre-build review or scrimmage, where I am reporting on construction planning, kit option choices, evaluation of the kit, and preliminary observations. A full build will follow soon!