A bit of explanation here. I try to do full-build reviews with photos taken through most of the process. When I hooked my memory card into the USB port on my computer, it said, “there are no files”. And there weren’t. It had erased my photos, so all my pictures are GONE. It did the same to another memory card. I am quite unhappy.

On with the review.

Scale Aircraft Conversions does white metal landing gear for a lot of aircraft kits. Some are necessary because the kit parts aren’t correct. Some you need because the plastic kit parts aren’t strong enough to hold the model. And then there’s this case. I finished the Victor kit, and it was a tail sitter. OK, I glued it to a piece of foamcore board, and the glue held the nose down. When the opportunity came to get the SAC gear, I jumped at the chance.

I figured I was going to have to remove the nose gear from the wheel well and add weight. I also figured, quite rightly that I was going to have to replace the nose gear because I was going to destroy it when I removed it. So why not replace all of them while I was at it?

I removed the Great Wall gear with a pair of needle-nose pliers. I had to clean up the interior of the wheel wells a bit. I removed the wheels from the GW gear, and did a little drilling to get the holes back in the wheels and I did some fix it painting on the tires.

The wheels fit perfectly on the SAC gear legs, 4 on each main gear, and two on the nose gear. Please note that SAC doesn’t include the splashguards for the nose gear wheels, you have to use the GW part. I also had to reference the kit instructions to see how the nose gear went together, as I had really did a great job of disassembling the GW nose gear.

I now drilled a hole in the front of the nose gear well and put the sprue from the SAC gear plus some birdshot. I checked, and I no longer had a tail-sitter.

I had almost no problems installing the SAC gear. It fit very nicely into the gear wells. Another plus to the SAC white metal is that if something is ever so slightly out of plumb, you can do a “forming adjustment” to get it looking right. Forming is what we used to say instead of “bending” when I worked on typewriters.

I put the nose gear doors back on and it was done.

Overall Assessment.

Highly recommended. Except for the photo problem, this was a super project. I was able to fix a problem with a finished kit and it looks super. I like this so much I’ll probably buy a set for my Anigrand Victor kit.

Many thanks to Scale Aircraft Conversions for the review item and to IPMS USA for the chance to fix my Victor.