Among the oldest kits in my collection was this old 1970s Frog Gloster Javelin FAW.9 which I bought in 1977 or 1978. It’s only taken forty and bit years but, finally, here it is, made. It’s not a bad kit by the standards of the 1970s and, in fact, better than most kits published in that decade. If you want to make a model of the Javelin in 1/72 your options are either this or the only slightly younger Heller kit that was reboxed by Airfix. The challenges are the raised panel lines, the ancient decal sheet, the simplistic cockpit and the generally coarse or non-existent decals. Apart from that this is a fairly decent kit. I expect, however, that modellers who have only been in the game for a decade or so will be shocked by this kit and declare it unmakeable. They’re wrong. Sure, this is never going to be a competition winner, but it looks big and hulking like a Javelin should. The paints are a mixture of AK Real Colour, Tamiya and SMS lacquers and the decals come from Xtrdecal.
Continuing the theme of making the little ‘bonus’ kits that you get with the Anigrand 1/144 resin kits, here is their Waco CG-4A assault glider. It’s not much of a kit really and is very basic, but if you want to have a model of this glider to put alongside your 1/144 Boeing 707 by way of comparison, this is the only game in town. It’s not difficult to make but I wouldn’t advise looking under the wings because you will find that the struts look more like lengths of 6 inch industrial piping than anything you’d put on an aeroplane. So don’t look and then it gives the impression of looking more or less like a CG-4A. The paints are from the AK Real Color range.
The new Arma 1/72 kit of the General Motors FM-2 is getting outstanding reviews and I was tempted to dispose of this Hobby Boss kit of the FM-2 and get the new kit instead. However, this seems to be the month in which I put together generally unworthy kits, so I decided to tough it out and make this one instead. Actually, painted up in some of SMS’s lovely Dark Sea Blue lacquer you can’t see too many of the faults with this kit - to name but one there don’t appear to be any exhaust pipes so if you really want them I advise you get the Arma kit.
Here are three that I made earlier. All of them also fit generally into the unworthy category.
This AMT 1/72 Boeing KC-135R is a big brute of a kit that I remember almost throwing in the bin more than once. Had there been any decals for the French version at the time I made this it would be in French markings, but that’s life.
More of a horror is this 1/72 Hobbycraft deHavilland Canada DHC-7-100. I’m sure that I’ve read an article somewhere explaining how to turn this into a decent model but my main battle was with the engines because they are such a prominent feature of this model.
Not quite so difficult was this Airfix 1/72 BAC TSR-2 which has what they euphemistically call these days ‘fit issues’. Apart from that, this is a reasonable kit of a gorgeous looking aeroplane and, in any case it’s the only injection moulded kit available, if you can find one.
