This is Lee's
offering of the E-2C Hawkeye. The detail of the kit was quite good, with both
raised and recessed panel lines. The landing gear also looked pretty good.
Unfortunately the fit was a bit of a shocker in some places, particularly the
nose. The decals weren't the best, all the red warning arrows were printed out
of register and the prop tip markings were way too big, which caused a bit of a
headache when applied to the prop tips. I didn't use the star and bars supplied,
instead I used some supplied in
Hasegawa's EKA-3B kit.
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Assembly was pretty straight
forward, but as I found out later, model putty became a good friend of mine. I
used a fair bit around the nose to build it up and blend it to the fuselage, as
the nose cone was too small. Also, there were some fit issues around the wing
leading edge and around where the engines attached to the wing. The fit of the
canopy was also a little debateable, as well as around the tail hook, so more
bog there too. The canopy was supplied in two halves, so I joined it with normal
hobby glue
applied with a tooth pick.
Finally the kit was painted in
Humbrol 64 and coated in Longlife polish (the local version of Future), then the
decals were applied, then another coat of Longlife. HF antennae were made from
stretched sprue and little mounts were added underneath the horizontal stabs.
The panel lines and weathering was done with pastel chalks, as described by
Steve Bamford in the how-to section.
All in all the kit scrubs up quite well, but a bit of gap filling is required as
well as patience! This is the only kit around that I've found that depicts this
particular aircraft, which is an essential build for anyone's U.S. Navy
collection and does look quite good once finished.
My thanks goes to Tom Jarrell and
all those that have submitted pictures of E-2C's to Airliners.net and ARC's
walkaround files.
Andrew
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