Recently my wife became very interested in Concorde, for her it is perfection in aircraft form. For her interest is primarily civil aircraft where as mine is military.
Over the past few days she's been asking me if I could get her "a Concorde." I had offered to get a model kit and build one but apparently I spend far too long building and painting a model. I decided to look a die-cast models however for me as a modeller I felt they just lacked the detail that I'm used to. It was then that I encountered this Easy Kit from Revell and thought I'd give it a try.
First of all before I begin this review I'm going to say that it's not something I'd normally consider for myself. I understand it's a kit aimed at younger and novice modellers and so my review will reflect that. I've seen an increase in such kits (especially from Hobbyboss and Zvezda) and I certainly think they offer a good way into the hobby for beginners who'd be put off by the more complex kits as a starting point.
The kit comes in a nice box with the pre-painted tail section on display. Upon opening the box you get two pre-painted sprues, a single clear piece and an instruction sheet. The instruction are typical Revell black and white drawn instruction, in this case with a total of 7 steps.
I have to say I was quite impressed with the detail of the parts upon first seeing them, however I thought it would be difficult to remove some of the parts without damaging the paint, mostly where black painted parts were attached to a sprue. Also there was a slight error in the instructions, they seemed to suggest 3 parts were needed to build the cockpit windows when in the actual kit there was just one single part.
Construction began by fitting the windows and cockpit into one of the halves of the aircraft before snapping the other half together. Overall it was straight forward however there was a slight gap between the two. I see no reason why you couldn't glue the parts together but for the purpose of this review I decided not to use any glue.
Next up were the wings, the top and bottom halves clip together and then the body clips onto the wings, couldn't be easier and already I had a model looking like Concorde, all be it with a flat nose.
I added the nose and I have to say this was the only part I felt that was not detailed well in the instructions, it was very easy to put it on the wrong way round. And then I encountered exactly the issue I feared would happen. Removing the wheels from the sprues I found I was left with some very ugly white spots on the tyres.
I was left with no choice but to deviate from the "easy kit" and get a pot of black paint out to correct this. There is of course an option to build the kit with the landing gear up and given the weak nature of the landing gear I'd suggest you hold on to the parts in case the landing gear ever gets broken.
After that it was on to the final stage, adding the engines. Again the black painted parts need a slight bit of touching up but apart that it was a straight forward finish to this kit. Total build time, (including taking photographs and painting) had been 45 minutes.
So what did I think of this kit overall? It was a surprisingly fun build although I felt it needed a bit of painting to finish off neatly. The end result certainly looks like Concorde and I think it's nicer than the die-cast models I'd seen. For a simple model kit I did think it was a bit expensive but then again you don't have the cost of glues and paints, something I tend to forget as I've accumulated lots of them over many years of painting and building models.
Compared to die-cast models you do get your money's worth and you get the chance to actually build something which I think would be a good thing for younger modellers and those who are new to the hobby. The finished model looks good and my wife has put it on display, she finally has her Concorde. As for me, I'm thinking of that Easy Kit Lufthansa 747 that I saw on the shelf next to this one...
Overall score: 2.5 out of 5, a fun build which is exactly what the hobby should be about. Slightly let down by the need to get out the paint.
No comments:
Post a Comment