The Fw-200 was an all-metal four-engine airplane that was originally designed as an airliner. As World War II broke out, it was modified for use for long-range maritime patrol, reconnaissance and as an anti-shipping patrol bomber in addition to a transport. This airplane has been modeled twice in 1/72 scale by Revell but recently Trumpeter have added the airplane to their line-up. The Trumpeter kit is a great improvement on the Revell kits in both detail and accuracy but as always, Aires/Quickboost have found some areas to improve the kit.

The Condor was powered by four nine cylinder air-cooled engines. Radiators for the engine oil cooling systems were located below and toward the rear of the cowlings. The kit parts show the concern that Trumpeter have designed into this kit. Their radiators consist of three parts; the body of the radiator and front and rear inserts to show the radiator surface. The insert parts are really small and care must be taken to make sure that they don’t fly off your tweezers as you sand off the sprue connection. In spite of the extra work of Trumpeter, Quickboost felt that they could improve the parts. As the photo shows, the kit parts feature fairly crude detail for the radiator surfaces plus the intake and outlet areas of the radiators are thick and not scale looking. Lastly, the radiator surfaces do not seem to be sufficiently inset from the edges of the coolers.

The photo of the Quickboost Radiators shows the much finer detail of the face of the radiator. It also shows the nice sharp, accurate edges of the oil coolers. My one concern about the Quickboost parts was that they were attached to the sprues at the outside surfaces. I was afraid that I might damage the outside surfaces of the oil coolers when I tried to cut them off of the sprue. As the photo shows, this was not a problem. The parts cleaned up nicely after being removed from the sprue.

Conclusions

This Quickboost set, like the previous sets that I have reviewed, is a good addition for the modeler that wants to make a more accurate looking model of the Trumpeter Fw-200 Condor. The parts are cleanly molded without any visible defect and the parts are easy to remove from the pour sprues. Well recommended. A big thank you to Aires/Quickboost for supplying these parts for review. A check of the Aires web site lists worldwide distributors for their products. The parts can be obtained from them as well as from many local hobby shops.