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I have to start this review with a
confession that, on the whole, I
am not a big fan of Eastern
Europe/Russian kits. About the
only manufacturer worth its salt
is the MPM family. Most other
manufacturers tend to produce
rather low quality kits. With
that said, I must admit that this
one was quite a surprise. I had
heard that this was a reboxing
of the Gran SA-2 Guideline,
and I had read reviews that the
Gran version was decent, so I
decided to give this kit a try.
Overall the quality is good, with decent fit and not too much flash present. There are a total of 32
pieces in soft light greyish plastic spread over two sprues. There is a comprehensive decal sheet
containing numerous glossy images for airframe stenciling. Except for the fins, all the joins are
butt joins. The
parts have no
locating pins to
make alignment
during
construction
easier.
Construction was
straightforward. I
built the kit as
two subassemblies:
one
being the missile
itself, the other
the launcher.
The kit was
basically built
straight from the
box.
The only trouble spots of any mention came from the separate fins (parts 3, 5, 6 & 7). They are to
be glued into slots in the fuselage, but the slots were slightly larger than the tabs, which left small
indents that needed to be filled and sanded afterwards.
Some filling needs to be done on the body around the nose cone at the probe (the probe is integral
with part 1 and not shown in the parts diagram but is shown on the box top picture). On the
whole, seams were not too bad, and the only place they posed a problem was around the tail near
the exhaust cone, where room to work is tight, and on the launch rail (parts 19 & 20) where there
is quite a large seam to remove.
The only modification of note is that I added a bottom to the blast deflector (part 21) using some
thin Evergreen plastic sheet.
When it came time to paint the kit I had already decided I was not going to use the decals
supplied with the kit. The images were glossy and well printed, but you could tell from just
looking at them that they were going to be chancy to work with. Besides, the scheme is supposed
to overall natural metal, and I am not comfortable with metallic schemes. I decided that if I could
avoid any markings, I would, so I searched the internet and checked my references and decided
on a North Vietnamese scheme, in overall medium green camouflage with dark green/black
squiggles. For the green I used Testors B-52 dark green, and the squiggles were applied with a
fine brush using Testors flat black. The white lines on the nose were from the spares box. The
launcher was painted a dark olive drab green, and weathered slightly with thinned black and
brown acrylics.
Following a coat of Aeromaster acrylic flat, the missile was super glued to the launch rail.
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Conclusion
For the price this is a good value kit. It is reasonably easy to build and makes a nice facsimile of
the real thing when finished.
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