BQM-74 Chukar
kit no. A72060

Box contains 12 resin pieces in a light tan colour. There are 6 pieces for each drone, consisting of a body, wings, horizontal tail & fin. And that's it. There's no instructions, no colouring guide nor any decals. The first two omissions aren't onerous as there's plenty of references on the web that can help with where parts should be placed and for painting. The big issue is the lack of decals. There are a lot of markings on these drones and finding suitable and correctly sized markings will be difficult. I was fortunate in this respect in that I had had a set of decals custom printed by Starfighter Decals years ago (before they stopped doing custom printing) for use on other models.

Overall casting is only so-so. Panel lines are engraved and deep enough that a few coats of paint won't obliterate them. Casting is generally poor, with quite a few pinholes, many in not so convenient places like trailing edges of the wings and fins. Fixing these requires extra care not to damage the panel lines or the very thin trailing edges of the control surfaces.

On all my wing and tail parts there was at least one spot along the engraved ailerons where there was a hole. All I could do was flow some extra thin cyano glue along the line and then hit it immediately with accelerator to make sure the glue didn't thin out enough to make the hole reappear. Any attempt to adjust the line with some engraving risked opening another hole. In the end, the casting was so poor that I made one model using the best parts from both. The remaining pieces were tossed into the parts bin. Most annoying!

Conclusion

I have purchased a few other items from Black Dog, and their overall casting was much better than what was found in this kit, which I found surprising. What really detracts from the value is the rather high price considering the contents, especially the lack of decals, which will be an added cost for the modeller.

Not a kit I'd recommend. Buy it only for the fact that it is currently the only kit available.

Review Last Updated: 14 April 2020

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