Hobby Boss 1/72 Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:29 am
The Aircraft info from Wikipedia, the same as on the box:
The Sukhoi PAK FA ("Prospective Airborne Complex of Frontline Aviation") is a twin-engine jet fighter being developed by Sukhoi for the Russian Air Force. The Sukhoi T-50 is the prototype for PAK FA. The PAK FA, a fifth generation jet fighter, is intended to be the successor to the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the Russian inventory and serve as the basis of the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA being developed with India. The T-50 prototype performed its first flight 29 January 2010.
The Russian Defence Ministry will purchase the first 10 evaluation example aircraft after 2012 and then 60 production standard aircraft after 2016. The first batch of fighters will be delivered with current technology engines. The PAK-FA is expected to have a service life of about 30–35 years.
The Kit:
To be honest, I bought this kit mainly because of the wicked camo scheme and the low price (€20 /£17, that includes shipping from uk to sweden). I haven't built many jet fighters and this is the first from Hobby Boss so here it goes. I will present photos with comments followed by some issues and conclusions.
The Boxart looks good, and that's what sold me
Everything came seperatly bagged.
Painting and decaling sheet plus promo
The color call outs. I wasn't aware that Vallejo has a "burnt iron". It does not show up on the color chart on their website, maybe im stupid?
The instructions
Instructions example. Notice that the ejection seat consists of 5 different parts, that's impressive for 1/72, but well get to the ejection seat later on.
The sprues:
The canopy looks super clear and neat. Looks absolutely perfect in my opinion.
The decal sheet and the included photo etch. Since this is a prototype aircraft, there arent many decals. That's why I cant complain that the stencils arent readable (even though they ought to be in russian
)
The Review:
The positives:
The fusilage has some very crisp and fine molded detail wich looks in scale. The plastic feels sturdy, but not rough.
The ejection seats look really nice detailed for out of the box and the photo etch "ejection lever" is a nice treat.
The exhausts look really good for out of the box, didnt get a good picture of them, sorry.
The photo etch instrument panel looks really interesting as does the photo etch details for the pitot tube(i think). The canopy is crystal clear with litte or no magnifying effect. It is also free from seams.
example of the surface detail:
The negatives:
This looks like a pretty big bird. And that's one of the main problems for me, the size. I read some other reviews and they said that the ejection seat looks too big for this scale. After taking a look myself, I could not agree more. I would take it even further and saying that the whole kit is too large for the scale, which would mean that the ejection seat might not be out of the "kit scale". By multiplying the size that the kit said (30,7cm x 20,5cm) I got the actual size of 22,1m x 14,7m. Wikipedia claims that the size is 19,8m x 14m(the development of this fighter is mostly classified and this info could be off).
That's a difference of 2 meters to the bodys length and ,7m to the wing span. The kit seems to be a bit out of scale to me, what do you think? To illustrate this I compared the ejection seat cushion to an ejection seat from my 1/72 Italeri Merlin helicopter. Please observe that the PAK-FA seat(to the right) is only the cushion and will add up with other parts to become even bigger.
The kit has some other minor issues. First of all the intakes has some ejection pin marks, but they are no biggie.
One of the main sprues was pretty warped. Cannot tell if the fusilage itself is affected by it.
The final issue I had, and this might only concern my kit, are these "drop mark" or whatever they are. They are raised and should not be there. I have no idea what they are caused by, but they look like some kind of drop marks. Judge for yourselves.
Conclusion:
The kit looks terrific considering it's out of the box with the photo etch, the detailed seats, the good looking exhausts and the splendid canopy. The only main issues that comes to my mind is the scale issue of the seats and the kit itself and maybe the strange marks on the fusilage but they should be sandable. The landing bay doors could also be more detailed. I also wonder if Vallejo has burnt iron on their color chart, they dont as far as I know but maybe Im wrong on that one.
From what I know right now, the kit looks like good value, let's hope it comes together well. I will update this review once the kit is finished.
Cheers
The Sukhoi PAK FA ("Prospective Airborne Complex of Frontline Aviation") is a twin-engine jet fighter being developed by Sukhoi for the Russian Air Force. The Sukhoi T-50 is the prototype for PAK FA. The PAK FA, a fifth generation jet fighter, is intended to be the successor to the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the Russian inventory and serve as the basis of the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA being developed with India. The T-50 prototype performed its first flight 29 January 2010.
The Russian Defence Ministry will purchase the first 10 evaluation example aircraft after 2012 and then 60 production standard aircraft after 2016. The first batch of fighters will be delivered with current technology engines. The PAK-FA is expected to have a service life of about 30–35 years.
The Kit:
To be honest, I bought this kit mainly because of the wicked camo scheme and the low price (€20 /£17, that includes shipping from uk to sweden). I haven't built many jet fighters and this is the first from Hobby Boss so here it goes. I will present photos with comments followed by some issues and conclusions.
The Boxart looks good, and that's what sold me
Everything came seperatly bagged.
Painting and decaling sheet plus promo
The color call outs. I wasn't aware that Vallejo has a "burnt iron". It does not show up on the color chart on their website, maybe im stupid?
The instructions
Instructions example. Notice that the ejection seat consists of 5 different parts, that's impressive for 1/72, but well get to the ejection seat later on.
The sprues:
The canopy looks super clear and neat. Looks absolutely perfect in my opinion.
The decal sheet and the included photo etch. Since this is a prototype aircraft, there arent many decals. That's why I cant complain that the stencils arent readable (even though they ought to be in russian
)The Review:
The positives:
The fusilage has some very crisp and fine molded detail wich looks in scale. The plastic feels sturdy, but not rough.
The ejection seats look really nice detailed for out of the box and the photo etch "ejection lever" is a nice treat.
The exhausts look really good for out of the box, didnt get a good picture of them, sorry.
The photo etch instrument panel looks really interesting as does the photo etch details for the pitot tube(i think). The canopy is crystal clear with litte or no magnifying effect. It is also free from seams.
example of the surface detail:
The negatives:
This looks like a pretty big bird. And that's one of the main problems for me, the size. I read some other reviews and they said that the ejection seat looks too big for this scale. After taking a look myself, I could not agree more. I would take it even further and saying that the whole kit is too large for the scale, which would mean that the ejection seat might not be out of the "kit scale". By multiplying the size that the kit said (30,7cm x 20,5cm) I got the actual size of 22,1m x 14,7m. Wikipedia claims that the size is 19,8m x 14m(the development of this fighter is mostly classified and this info could be off).
That's a difference of 2 meters to the bodys length and ,7m to the wing span. The kit seems to be a bit out of scale to me, what do you think? To illustrate this I compared the ejection seat cushion to an ejection seat from my 1/72 Italeri Merlin helicopter. Please observe that the PAK-FA seat(to the right) is only the cushion and will add up with other parts to become even bigger.
The kit has some other minor issues. First of all the intakes has some ejection pin marks, but they are no biggie.
One of the main sprues was pretty warped. Cannot tell if the fusilage itself is affected by it.
The final issue I had, and this might only concern my kit, are these "drop mark" or whatever they are. They are raised and should not be there. I have no idea what they are caused by, but they look like some kind of drop marks. Judge for yourselves.
Conclusion:
The kit looks terrific considering it's out of the box with the photo etch, the detailed seats, the good looking exhausts and the splendid canopy. The only main issues that comes to my mind is the scale issue of the seats and the kit itself and maybe the strange marks on the fusilage but they should be sandable. The landing bay doors could also be more detailed. I also wonder if Vallejo has burnt iron on their color chart, they dont as far as I know but maybe Im wrong on that one.
From what I know right now, the kit looks like good value, let's hope it comes together well. I will update this review once the kit is finished.
Cheers
