GAM-67 Crossbow

Another typical short run 12 Squared kit. It comes in a plastic bag with a paper header. The parts are crudely cast with lots of flash and large injection gates. There are 18 pieces in brittle light grey plastic - seven for the missile itself, and 11 for the trailer. Panel lines are engraved, but they are poor, being more of a trench than anything else.

The instruction sheet provides only an exploded parts diagram for the missile and the trailer. There are no part numbers (I have added part numbers to aid identification in this review). All the parts are butt joined. No alignment pins are provided.

An exceptional set of decals printed by Scalemaster are included. They are a quantum leap above the rest of the kit.

Separating and sanding the parts is the first task. Once complete, everything needs to be checked for fit. The wing (part 1) fits through slots in the body (parts 2 & 3) that need to be opened up some to allow the wing to pass through.

I blanked off the jet intake. Once the body halves are joined you will have a "mother of all seams" along the entire length of the body to contend with. Some major scraping, sanding and filling are in order at this point. Also worth noting is that the panel lines do not match up on the belly of the missile. They are off by about a millimetre and next to impossible to correct.

Knowing that I was going to need many coats of primer and paint to get a decent finish, and also wanting the panel lines to be more even in depth, I rescribed most of them.

A transport trailer is included. Be prepared to spend a lot of time scraping and sanding the parts to get something acceptable. The wheels were absolutely atrocious. They were not much more than misshapen plastic blobs and had to be replaced. Not having anything suitable in my spares box, I scavenged a set of wheels from a 1/72 scale Academy Volkwagen Kubelwagen. They were almost exact matches, though a tad undersized.

Painting preparation consisted of multiple coats of Testors light gray enamel as a primer, with sanding and filling in between coats. Once an acceptable finish was achieved, the kit received a couple of coats of Testors flat red enamel in advance of four coats of Testors gloss red enamel. The trailer received similar treatment - a primer coat of Testors light grey, followed by a couple of coats of Testors flat Insignia Yellow, and then four coats of Testors gloss Insignia Yellow.

The decals were the only redeeming part of the kit. They are thin, in register and have nice dense inks that don't let the missile's red body colour bleed through. After an application of Micro Sol, they snug down and look as if they had been painted on.

The instruction sheet includes 1/72 scale templates for those of you who want to go that extra mile and scratch build some wing pylons to mount the missile on a Hasegawa B-47.

Conclusion

This is not an easy kit to build. After the amount of work done, you'd almost swear that you had carved it from a block of plastic.

	GAM-67 Crossbow kit no. 2-10
			Review by Al Magnus - one72guy(at)gmail(dot)com