First off, apologies to Fred Medel at Tamiya America for a long-delayed review. I’ve been busy building models for retired veterans and/or their family members and this one took a back seat.

That being said, wow, what a kit. Incredibly complex, but the fit is a modeler’s dream. As Dave Morrissette said when building its big brother in 1/48, many of the parts seem to “click” into place. In fact, the only serious fit problem I had probably resulted from too thick a layer of paint rather than any issues with the kit itself.

Since this kit and its variants have been reviewed several times here in both scales, I will limit my comments to some lessons learned along the build process. First of all, stock up on a lot of different paint colors. Many of them are gray, leading me to a bad pun (“50 Shades of Aircraft”). Tamiya’s catalog entry for this bird calls out 42 different colors! In fact, I spent the first part of the build planning the process, and I made an enlarged copy of the painting guide so as not to have to keep flipping back to that page of the 20-page build guide. I scribbled in the color callouts on many of the pages to streamline this process but be aware that there is a LOT of detail painting and masking in store for you if you build this kit. You’ll also end up mixing some custom colors (the radome and parts of the landing gear, for example). I filled a tray with most of the colors I would need and temporarily marked the equivalent Tamiya color on each bottle.

You’ll need to decide which version you want to build, as the kit comes with 5 marking options from a total of three countries (United States Marine Corps, Royal Air Force, Italian Navy). Tamiya includes a large fold-out poster showing each markings choice. I built the commander’s aircraft from VFMA-225. There’s no significant difference in paint or construction until you reach the decaling stage, so you can make that call late in the build. About the only other option is whether you want to build a hovering aircraft or one that’s landed – Tamiya provides compressed or full stroke landing gear and a display stand to support either choice.

A few comments and lessons learned along the way:

• I hopped around the construction sequence (155 parts, 47 discrete stages) primarily to consolidate the masking and painting process.I lined through each step when I had it completed. There are numerous (understatement) decals to be applied during construction as well as on the completed kit so keep track of these during the build.
• I created a misalignment issue of my own doing in the cockpit that resulted in not being able to fit the ejection seat. This was easily remedied once I realized the cause (incorrect location of the instrument panel under its coaming.
• I chose not to add the highly detailed pilot, but that means that none of the seat harnesses are in place. These could be scratch built but straps for an empty cockpit configuration would be a nice bonus.
• I also chose not to follow the assembly guide for installing the nose gear – Tamiya would have you trap this in the gear well during fuselage assembly and cut away a small tab to allow it to swing down into position. I had to trim away some parts of the gear truss to install it later in the build and it’s far less durable than if I had followed the instructions.

Decals

On the plus side, the decal sheet is comprehensive – over 200 individual stencils and markings. On the down side, there are over 200 individual stencils and markings <g>. There were many, many decaling sessions involved and to be honest, I left off some of the smaller ones, particularly on the underside, in trying to get this review finished. The poster sized markings guide lists these comprehensively, and again, I used a Sharpie marker to strike through each callout as I applied it.

The decals themselves are thin and apply nicely, although I did use Solvaset here and there. My only gripe? The decal numbers, printed on the sheet in black and enclosed with a circle, release much, much sooner than the decals themselves. This presented two problems – I would prep a decal for application only to have the identifying numbers float off the sheet or, worse yet, float onto the body of the decal itself. I had to go back and carefully scrape off more than a few rogue decal identifiers that found their way onto the model’s surface.

Ninety percent of the painting was done with AV acrylic colors, some custom blended from my stock of shades. I applied AV Gloss Varnish over the completed kit as a base for decaling, and then shot a 50/50 mix of Testors gloss and flat lacquers, thinned with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner, to achieve a satin sheen.

In summary, you can’t beat the engineering of recent Tamiya kits, along with excellent instructions. Thanks to Tamiya, Tamiya America and Mr. Fred Medel for the review opportunity!