Meng’s 1/72nd scale F-102’s are very nice kits with a nicely detailed cockpit interior. Of course, we all know that there is always room for improvement. The Czech company, Pavla, came out with a very nice replacement for the kit cockpit. You get eleven nicely cast parts in grey resin. Included are a new cockpit tub with detailed side panels, instrument panel, seat with seatbelts and shoulder harness and ejection seat guide rail, canopy elevating mechanism, new HUD, separate rudder pedals, new yoke and side console levers.

The instrument panel is crisply cast, but the kit gives you a nice instrument panel decal that will allow you to produce a very convincing instrument panel in this small scale. There is more detail in the Pavla instrument panel, however, so some careful painting and drybrushing can produce an exceptional instrument panel.

One nice feature of Pavla’s cockpit tub is that the mounting/locating rails for the nose gear well are also cast, exactly the same as the kit tub, so there is no guessing about where and how to mount the gear well. This is accomplished by the pour block being on the side of the tub instead of the bottom. Nice job!

My sincere thanks to Pavla and IPMS/USA for the review sample.