History

Introduced in November 2013, the P-8A Poseidon is the latest multi-mission maritime aircraft traditionally flown by the US Navy. In contrast to the piston engine-powered P2V Neptune and the turboprop-powered P-3 Orion, the P-8A is propelled by twin high-bypass turbofan engines. Each engine is equipped with an electric generator to power the P-8A's extensive array of onboard electronics.

The Kit

Inside the box you will find 4 light grey and 1 tinted sprue of plastic, a decal sheet and an instruction fold out. The plastic is cleanly molded and has some very nice raised and recessed detail. The decal sheet is printed very nice with a semi-matte finish.

Construction

9 steps are needed to build this kit and it all starts WITH…..THE ENGINES! You thought I was going to say cockpit didn’t you! (No cockpit is provided in this kit) 6 pieces make up the engines and it’s all pretty simple but make sure you drill out the holes in each (One 1.1 mm in parts # E2 and E16) one. Next up is the fuselage and the first thing to deal with are the 9 holes to drill/clean out and 3 antennas that are to be removed. Once that is complete you can assemble the fuselage and Hasegawa has done a really nice thing by adding a small but heavy metal screw that threads into the forward bulkhead for weight. Once this is together the instructions show you a few lines on both halves that need to be filled or scribed but I decided to do this before assembly.

Next up is step 4 and this is where you have to decide on posing the wheels up or down and it’s also when you add the wings. Hasegawa made this part of construction very easy as they have separate landing gear pieces for either way you choose. One thing you must remember to do though is drill the 5mm hole for the display stand piece that fits into the underside. So far everything has fit well and I’ve had no major problems, that would change!

Step 7 is where you add the engines to the wings and for whatever reason I could not get them to sit just right. I’m not sure if it was me or the kit but this is an area to watch out for. Once these are in place it’s time for all of the small antennas (11 of them!) and weapons pylons....although no weapons are provided.

Finishing

I used Testors Model Master Gloss gull Grey on this kit. You are given two marking options in this kit:

1. LN 434 from VP-45 in 2015.
2. LN 440 from VP-45 in 2015.

The decals worked very well and sat down nicely with a little help from Micro-Set.

Conclusion

This is a very nice but small, Length: 7.77 in (197.5 mm) Width: 7.48 in (190 mm), kit that builds easily. I recommend this to all modelers looking for a modern ASW aircraft for their collection.

I would like to thank Hasegawa & Hobbico for supplying this kit, the review corps for letting me build it and all of you for reading this……..Model on!!