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I know of only one other 1/72 scale kit of this
early Soviet cruise missile - that being a resin
version produced by Neomega. Now I'm not
a big fan of resin kits, so when the MP
Models injected plastic version appeared I figured it was
worth a try especially considering its
inexpensive price.
Impressions were quite favourable upon
opening the box for the first time, but in this
kit's case, beauty is definitely just skin deep.
Inside the box you find a set of three sprues
containing 28 parts molded in soft white
plastic.
The decal sheet looks nice, with the images
being thin, in register and quite opaque in
colour, though they do have a distinct matte
finish. There is a decal for the intake warning
stripe and a few for missile handling, but the
majority of the images are for use on the
carrier aircraft (Trumpeter Tu-16K). I can't
vouch for their quality because I did not use
any of the decals.
The plastic is very soft and easily damaged. The parts have numerous sink marks, scratches,
nicks, waves and pits that remind me of what many resin kits are like. The finish is smooth in
some places while rough and pebbly in others. For example, the wings exhibited both finishes.
The tip and root portions were glass smooth, while the plastic between had a distinct orange peel
finish. The panel lines are engraved but they are not consistent in depth or straightness. Some
even had slight ridges beside them. I was forced to rescribe many of the lines anew. The injection
gates are thick and require a lot of cleaning up to get rid of them.
Be prepared to scrape and sand practically every part since they almost all have noticeable mold
lines on them probably caused by the mold halves not aligning properly. This is particularly
noticeable with the trolley wheels. Sanding to remove the lines produced wheels that are slightly
out of round. The best parts in the kit are the wings, which are thin, and well molded (other than
the finish problem mentioned earlier).
Parts fit is terrible, but strangely enough the best fit was with the horizontal tail surfaces and the
wings, though I did have to resort to cutting off the locating pins and sanding the join smooth to
get the nice fit.
The kit includes FOD covers for the intake and exhaust, which you are pretty well forced to use,
for without them you can see clear through the fuselage to the backside of the engine exhaust
tube. They do need to be thinned to look anywhere near realistic.
I replaced the tail pipe with a piece
of plastic tubing. The two piece
exhaust pipe that comes with the kit
is more oval than round.
Pay attention to the front post on the
trolley that supports the front of the
missile. Its location is vague, so
you'll need to trial fit it with the
missile to ensure that you get it level
when the missile sits atop.
With all the work to sand, scrape
and rescribe lines, I was not looking
forward to painting the model.
Operational examples were natural
aluminium but with such a rough kit
I was looking at endless hours of
work to get a finish smooth enough
to apply a metal finish.
Fortunately one of the marking
options was for an overall red drone
version of the missile, circa the
1970s. The instructions give no
indication as to what colour to paint
the trolley, so I resorted to the box
top picture which shows it as being
red also.
Two primer coats of Floquil Caboose Red were applied. Between the coats the model was
checked for imperfections (of which there were many), and the whole kit was sanded smooth.
Over the primer coats I applied another two coats of Testors Gloss Red. Again the model was
checked between coats for imperfections and sanded as required.
Conclusion
In retrospect, I can not help but think that even though this kit comes in a box with the MP
Models name on it, I would venture to guess that it was really manufactured by Amodel. The
similarity between this kit and that which Amodel produces are too similar to be just coincidence.
So, the only way to describe this kit is with a lyric snippet, "She ain't pretty she just looks that way", from a song by the Canadian rock band,
The Northern Pikes.
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