IPMS/USA thanks Ross and his Team at SAC for supporting the IPMS USA reviewer corps with one more of many monthly releases of extremely useful and well thought out landing gear additions for the modeling crowd out here in the modeling world. And thanks to IPMS leadership for sending it to me to be reviewed.

This review is for the SAC landing gear released for the unbelievably huge FW-190A-5 released this past fall.

Another simple strengthening opportunity for a heavy kit, with my usual admonition to use metal gear for larger models. Larger models put more stress on plastic than metal.

I almost did not purchase the Hobbyboss kit, but the curiosity of what was in it took hold and, well, I have one. The short answer is there is a serious opportunity to build a “Wurger” A-5, with even more opportunity to detail many areas on the kit. First brush to me is this is a marketing experiment to see if the buyers will support future kits like this. Unlike many other 1/18 “toys” on the market, this kit is an attempt at serious modeling. There are many detail shortcuts in the design, but for the most part it seems to be a real attempt, so that’s for others to determine. It could use a serious resin cockpit and engine, and the gear wells could definitely be a detail point. The external riveting seems to follow the actual aircraft very closely, but I didn’t have time to photograph the FW-190 on display in Maryland last year at the fighter museum, and frankly don’t have time for rivet counting. It looks good externally.

The SAC landing gear shines on a kit like this. Included are 9 kit part duplicate cast metal parts for the model’s plastic items. I noted no flash, and overall finish is in line with other SAC gear. The one thing I did notice is the number of mold tags that needed to be removed on the kit gear, and there almost none of this on the SAC gear. A big time saver!

I installed the tail gear first; the trunnion fork was carefully opened on one end, slipped around the gear strut, and closed using pliers. The kit shock spring was dropped over the strut oleo, and compressed while placing on the pivot points. You have to be careful not to let the spring “blip” off into the carpet, but with care it all fits. I tack glued the opposite wheel fork into place without the tire to show how it fits. Nice!

The main gear, as noted before, is simply glued into a mounting socket, with no actual retraction walking beam or other support I personally would have preferred a bit more attention to this area from Hobbyboss, as the resulting join is, from an engineering standpoint, a stress fracture waiting to happen with resultant gear failure.

On both main gears, there are two places requiring a bit of drilling to accept the locating pins on other parts. First is the upper and lower strut oleo scissors mount holes, which require a simple drill out with a 1/16 bit to facilitate the pin on the scissors. The second is a more critical item, that being the strut extension/retraction and locking arm. This required a cross drilling exercise between two drilled holes to clean out the mounting hole. This appears to be a mold issue. Anyway, the pictures with the 1/16” drill bit shows my technique, as the pin on the retraction arm is square and rectangular, requiring this effort. Other than that, everything was great.

As usual the strength of the gear and lack of requirement for mold cleanup makes acquisition of SAC gear worth the extra cost for kit longevity. I highly recommend this gear if you are thinking of a 1/18 Butcher bird! Thanks again to Ross and his crew for working with us at IPMS USA!