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OK, in one of our recent adventures
you saw the "fun" I had with my Hobby-crap Otter. Well, here is
another one by the same company. Changes from the Otter, this one is not
dripping with cat vomit, it only sucks.
But with work can be polished into something almost as nice as a dog turd.
Unpainted this guy really left me questioning the wisdom of ever buying another
product by these guys. I do however admit their Skyhawk is not so bad, so Otter
and Arrow aside they have done something right.
Now, this one was built for the
Airshow group build on the ARC forums, so a couple advantages were found right
off the bat. The Snowbirds paint scheme can be used to hide a great many errors.
Also as I want to do a
few airshow birds in flight I was able to leave off the very wonky looking
sticks that are supposed to represent the planes landing gear.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Hobby crap continues to employ a grade nine
art student in making their instructions, however there are so few parts
you can really figure it out with out them. The cockpit is a waste of
time. Luckily I had a beautiful resin cockpit to get ideas off of which I
bought from Uncle Rick in Calgary a couple years back when this kit was
released. I am saving it for my next (gasp!!!!!!) Tutor which I plan on
doing canopy open. Sadly this cockpit sold out very quickly, I have no
idea how it fits but it HAS to be ten times better then what Hobbycrap
gives you, so if you can find one , BUY IT!
Hobby crap does not give you extras, things like pilots, so I raided the spares box for a Hasegawa Phantom pilot.
Painted him red, and stuck him to the four pieces of plastic that were
pretending (poorly) to be an ejection seat. The pilot tried to eject several
times. Luckily the Hobby crap seats don't work (there is a surprise), so after
several failed suicide attempts he reined himself to his fate and
surrendered. Fortunately the red Snowbirds uniform hid most of the blood
loss.
Now this model is way better then the Otter was. For starters the windows did
not melt like on the Otter. Only needed a large amount of putty as compared to
the seven metric tonnes required by the Otter. Mostly around the wing
joint. And the front landing gear doors. They do not come close to being a good
fit closed. The rear doors however were a perfect fit and oddly required nothing
but a touch of glue for a good fit. The hobby craft decals did not appear
too bad, the maple leafs are excellent but the font for the "ARMED
FORCES" markings seem off. So I used the excellent sheet that is available
from Belcher bits. Which also
gives choices for several regular training Tutors and several variations of the
Snowbirds markings over the last 700 years they have been flying the Old CT-114.
Sadly with cuts to all things not essential it is possible this will be the last
demo squadron paint scheme Canada has for some time. Hopefully some coin can be
found to keep 431 squadron flying but sadly I feel their time may soon be at an
end.
It would be nice to see an advancement to CT-155s but only time will tell.
The last photo shows my Tutor next to a Hobby Crap Arrow of the SAME scale.
Shawn
"Phantom" Weiler
Click on
images below to see larger images
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