Won these kit off ebay about a month ago and thought i got a good deal. Turns out that some are not the greatest kit out there. I'm thinking that it because the company MiniCraft is trying to make them affordable (a noble effort) but that means a lack of say Japanese model kit quality.
Soon as a i received them i got to work on all 4, first thing i noticed was the what i presume to be cheap plastic. Kinda plastic Christmas cracker toys are made out of.
The decals looked excellent and turned out to be when i decaled them up (post pics of them soon, still wip) Printed by Cartocraf of Italy who seem to be a massive decal producer for major model company's.
Easily to follow instruction but then at 1/144 scale, these little fighter always seem to assemble easily.
After a couple of hours assembling them i decided to bin the Spitfire and lightning, where really bad in my opinion, cheap plastic and really did not fit together very well. Shame about the lightning, really like that fighter and have yet to see any other available. Kept the decals from these and the landing gear which i though might come in handy for other project.
Thunderbolt was average, fitted together fine but needed alot of putty to fill in the massive gaps on the undercarriage, chunky landing gear, nasty looking canopy and has hardly any panels lines.
Best of the bunch was the Mustang, so far this has been the best kit ive built, has the better quality plastic, good fit, really nice panels lines, best canopy out of the lot and the best landing gear.
Overall-
Lockhead P-38J Lightning 1/5
North American P-51D Mustang 3/5
P-47D Thunderbolt 2/5
Supermarine Mark V Spitfire 1/5
From the date of the kit these date back to 1998, which means i will give MiniCraft another go as they have quite few kit i would like to build and i reckon they must have improved in the last 11 years.
Ian
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