F-22 Raptor USAF

I enjoyed building Hasegawa's F-22 offering in 1/48 scale. It has very nice details and, for the most part, built up nicely. The fuselage comes in two parts, top and bottom, as opposed to side to side which made for a lot fewer areas to putty. The cockpit is nicely detailed, but if I were to do it again, I might obtain an after-market cockpit for a bit more detail especially with respect to the ejection seat. But it's fine as is. I have heard of other having problems with paint adherence, but I primed the parts and no problem. The two most difficult aspects of the build concerned the landing gear and the engine intake ducting. The landing gear has way too many parts for my taste. And a lot of those parts didn't have pins for proper alignment and as a result, the parts were structurally just held together with glue. I had to redo the work a few times. The ducting ducting took quite a bit of effort to get them properly inserted into the fuselage. also where the intakes mate with the rest of the fuselage required some work with putty to get the seam out. While this were annoying issues, I very much enjoyed working on it and was very happy with the finished product. All in all it was well worth the money and time investment.

Not fun to build. Parts difficult to fit together, some having NO slots or pins. To many teeny tiny parts (glue drop larger than the item). The landing gear/wheel assembly is a nightmare. Model requires filling when completed. Buy something else.....