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Inside the box you get parts for the missile as well as its transport trailer. The missile comprises 20 parts while the trailer
has 32 parts. All the pieces are molded in a soft white styrene like plastic that is easy to damage when being cut, but is at least resilient
to breaking and snapping. There is a decal sheet and an instruction sheet.
The poor molds make it almost certain that this is likely the unreleased
kit announced by MP Models back in 2007 as shown on the side of the box
for MP Models' KS-1 kit, which was an atrocious kit in its own right. I do
wonder why Amodel would release such a poor kit which can only harm
their growing reputation as a quality manufacturer, a reputation that took
many years of steady progress to build up. Unlike their more recent offerings
which are beginning to show a finesse and level of detail approaching what
is offered by more established manufacturers, this kit exhibits numerous low
spots, nicks, bumps, flash and mold seams more reminiscent of their early
years. The panel lines are inconsistent with regards to depth and width, and
many of them have small lumps of plastic inside them making them look
rather odd. I knew this meant that I would have to try to rescribe many of the panel lines in an attempt to eradicate these
inconsistencies.
The trailer was the first part of the kit I started, but
it was so bad that I didn't even bother continue with
it. The parts are poorly cast with extensive mold
seams on every part. The wheels are supposed to
have slots in the rim but for the most part they are
indistinct depressions in the plastic. The bigger
pieces for the trailer's body have large and very
noticeable low spots in places where you have
absolutely no chance of filling and sanding without
completely destroying the nearby detail. The
trailer's tongue is composed of a lattice like frame
that is so poorly molded that scratch building a
replacement would probably take less time than
trying to use the kit parts.
The missile itself is a tad better than the trailer. The
fuselage is split horizontally which at first I thought
would pose a problem with filling and finishing the
seam along the join but it actually proved to be quite
easy to deal with. The amount of work was reduced
since the spot where the wings and horizontal stab
attach to the body cover a good part of the seam.
I decided to go with using the FOD cover on the
intake and scrapped the cone and interior pieces that
go inside. It was obvious that there was no way I
would be able to remove the seams in the tight
confines of the intake pipe. This also meant that I
had to use the exhaust cover which I slightly
modified by replacing the molded on handles with
some replacements made from wire.
I found it best to remove the mounting tabs for all the flying surfaces and go with a simple butt join. With the tabs
removed it was much easier to get a flush fit to the fuselage.
I drilled out the openings for the three small air intakes (parts 7, 11 & 12).
The instructions are useless when it comes to painting the missile. The box top art work is the only useful information for
painting information since the colour key in the instructions is grayscale and the colours listed are indistinguishable from
each other. I chose to do an overall red drone version which was based on one picture I have in my library. From past
experiences with the MP Models' KS-1 I figured the glossy red would also help to hide the flaws in the kit. Unfortunately
I was to find out that this was not completely the case with this kit.
I first started with a coat of light grey primer, sanded the flaws I could see, and then applied an undercoat of flat red. The
undercoat will darken the panel lines when the finishing gloss red coats are applied. My first coat of gloss red showed all
sorts of low spots, nicks and scrapes that were entirely invisible following the primer and undercoat. At this point I knew I
was in trouble because the low points were just deep enough that any attempt at removing them by sanding would most
likely cut through the layers of primer and expose the bare plastic. So my only option was to sand very lightly between
paint coats and hope that the low spots would be reduced by the layers of paint. This was partly successful but nowhere
completely eliminated the flaws. Hindsight now tells me that I should have gone with the dark green colour option and a
flat finish to hide the low spots and other flaws in the finish.
The decals are the best feature of the kit. They are well printed but unfortunately they are matt, which is fine for a
camouflaged example but not so good for my choice of a glossy finished example. Where to locate the decals on the
model is a bit vague again because of the poor quality of the placement diagram in the instructions. The decal locations
are indicated using black lines to show their position on the model, but unfortunately a lot of the lines just disappear into
the generally poor shading of the diagram.
Conclusion
This kit turned out to be a big disappointment. It exhibits an amateurishness that definitely is not in keeping
with the more recent offerings by Amodel and hopefully they will see fit not to release future kits that fall so short in
value and quality.
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