Community > Members > Martin L (Manchester, NH) > Product Reviews
A great value for money kit that builds into an attractive model and is a joy to build
 
There are two options available with this model and I chose to do the version as flown by Ace of Aces Luftwaffe Pilot Erich Bubi Hartmann who was credited with the highest number of aerial victories ever recorded- 352 This is another great newly tooled 1/32 scale kit from Revell of Germany (GmbH); very nice crisp clean moldings with great details including recessed panel lines, rivets, a great cockpit, undercarriage, movable flaps, elevators, ailerons and rudder The decals are cartograf and go down very nicely indeed. My only issues with this kit are: 1) For this size kit, I was expecting it to come with a detailed Daimler Benz DB605 engine, but it doesn't. That would have been another nice addition to this kit to be able to have the engine cowlings hinged open to show off the engine, which then allows further options for after-market maintenance men, or black-men as they were known due to wearing all black overalls, to be posed working on the engine. 2) The main undercarriage have a sloppy fit between the axle lugs and their locations within the wheel-wells. This could be improved with simple modification in the mold tooling to increase the geometry of the lugs so they are a nice slide fit/tighter fit within their location points. I had to super-glue mine in position one at a time and hold their position until the fast acting super-glue had set solid. Super-glue is highly recommended for ensuring that the main undercarriage is fixed solidly. 3) The assembly instructions have some incorrectly numbered parts ie the part numbers in the instructions do not match the part numbers on the sprues. 4) The kit has some alternative parts, such as three versions of rudder and two styles of vertical stabilizer, but, they're are no references indicating which one of the optional versions to use with the two different options of aircraft that can be modeled. So, again, this forces you to do research to find out from available images which versions look correct for the particular plane you build. 5) The painting instructions have color call-outs that are mixed around on the orthographic views; which could confuse a younger modeler that doesn't bother to research and check where the grey/green and grey violet camo colors go. ie, you could easily end up having the green camo airbrushed/painted where it should be grauviolet and vice-versa. 6) The two upper camo color call outs are for RLM 74 Graugrun and RLM 83 Lichtgrun over RLM 76 Lichtblau, In my opinion and following research, the RLM 83 Lichtgrau is incorrect and should be replaced with RLM 75 Grauviolet, which is what I did. 7) As with the part numbering and color call out references, some decals are incorrectly referenced, too, and, the Swaztika decals on the tail are not included; I used Aeromaster decals for those. 8) The last observation with this kit is that the upper wing bubbles above the wheel wells are too large, they were smaller on the actual aircraft, but there re after-market resin replacements available if you're the kind of modeler that wants accuracy. I always build my kits right out of the box because I refuse to pay for after-market product that costs more than I paid for the kit. I can live with the nuances and won't lose sleep My conclusion is this kits instruction/assembly booklet missed the quality control checks during manufacture/production and hence the issues pointed out above. But, that said, I still believe it to be a great value for money kit that is engineered very well with some great details. The kit has a skill level 5, indicating the most difficult level, but in my opinion, this should only have a skill level 3. If you have built half a dozen kits successfully, you can build this kit, it isn't difficult. I highly recommend this kit for the lover of the Messerschmitt BF109G-10, the fastest plane of the G series, and especially that it is in the markings of the Ace of Aces, Erich Bubi Hartman's colors