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Revell-Germany
Arado Ar 196A-3 Seaplane - 1/32 Scale, 192 parts |
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In Box Review
Reviewed by Glen Broman
There is nothing better than relieving the stress of a
tough day at work than a little retail therapy at your
favorite model shop. Sort of like the bar from “Cheers” where
everyone knows your name. After a particularly rough day
pounding square pegs into round holes, I stopped at Great
Lakes Hobby on the way home. I wasn’t looking for anything in
particular, but I had read in one of the model magazines that
Italeri had released a 1/48 Arado 196 seaplane.
For those of
you not among the cognoscenti, the Ar 196 floatplane was that
German floatplane you see mounted on capital ships like the
Bismarck and heavy cruisers or getting blasted into the sea by
Spitfires in British World War 2 flicks. I’m something of a
closet seaplane nut and I had heard that it wasn’t a bad kit.
As I was standing in the aisle looking at the Italeri kit, I
looked down at the bottom shelf and thought I saw another Ar
196 in a larger 1/32 scale box. In the words of the great
American philosopher Gomer Pyle, “surprise, surprise,
surprise”. I had not seen anything about an impending release
of the Ar 196 in pipe fitters scale. Way cool. I immediately
forgot about the 1/48 kit and picked up the Revell kit. The
box is large, but surprisingly compact compared your bog
standard Trumpeter 1/32 scale box. The price is also amazingly
compact compared to Trumpeter. The retail cost at Great lakes
was $34.99, about $10 less than the Italeri 1/48 scale kit and
$100 less than anything this big from Trumpeter. So what do
you get for your money? About 2 metric tons of plastic is
what.When you get this bad boy home and open up the verdammt Revell-Germany
end opening box you find a lot of plastic. There are six
bagged sets of sprue, including one of clear sprue. The detail
had me giggling like a little school girl, with restrained
panel lines that should not disappear under a coat of paint,
subtle surface details and very fine details and moldings. So,
let’s take a look at the moldings, shall we? The first bag
contains the interior sidewall detail and the cockpit
flooring. The side wall detail is molded as framing that
attaches to the fuselage sides, ala Eduard. Also in this bag
is a large circular stand to mount the aircraft on, if you
wish. A nice touch that should keep the completed model in one
place on your shelf, also a handy item in case you forget to
add weight to the front of the floats. The largest bag is full
of interior, engine and exterior parts
Once again, the detail
is very nice, although some is very petite and I would
recommend removing the parts with a photo etch saw, they are
way too delicate for cutting or snipping without potentially
damaging the parts. The engine wiring harness is one such
piece that will require careful removal, the parts are
commendably thin and will look very nice once assembled, in
fact, the engine is almost a kit in itself and one of the
options allow the engine to be displayed with the maintenance
panels open. The wing parts and fuselage sides are in their
own bag, once again, the detail and molding is very nice and
there are no signs of ejector pin marks on exterior surfaces.
There are two bags of parts for the floats along with two
bombs, which I have to admit, are a bit of a letdown, the fins
are over scale and they are best replaced by something else.
The clear parts are in their own bag and look good. The canopy
parts are all molded separately and are assembled to build the
canopy. This should be interesting; all of the joins are on
frame lines, so Tenax, my glue of choice, should work okay.
You could also give the parts a coat of Future and use super
glue. The Future keeps the super glue from fogging the
plastic. The instruction sheet is the standard Revell-Germany
multi lingual pictograph style, easy enough to follow after a
few beers. I would advise reading the pictures (!!??!!) very
carefully, as there are a number of options, you can build the
aircraft with wings folded (if you live in an apartment, this
really helps on display space) or with wings extended. And for
you show off’s, you could even build one wing extended and one
wing folded.
As
mentioned previously, you can open the maintenance panels, but
I would recommend detailing the interior of the panels if you
do so. There is plenty of detail right out of the box, but you
could also really go to town and detail the living daylights
out of this kit with scratchbuilt or the soon to be released
after market parts. I haven’t heard of any yet, but you know
they are coming, don’t you? There are two marking options, both
in schwarzgrun/dunkelgrun 70/71 splinter pattern upper
surfaces over light blue undersurfaces. One is a shore based
example from Crete and another from the Battleship Tirpitz in
1943. The decal sheet itself looks very nice; everything is in
register and the backings are fairly thin, although I bet the
white fuselage band would best be painted on. Of course, no
swastika’s are included, so you must source them from some
place else. I’ve never been a big fan of 70/71 schemes, so I
will be looking to see if there are other schemes, or perhaps
a foreign or postwar user.
Overall, this looks like a very
nice kit with tons of potential. At just a hair over $30 at
Great Lakes Hobby, how can you go wrong?
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Bronco
Models 1/35 scale GAZ 69(M) 4x4 Uutility Truck |
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In Box Review
Reviewed by Glen Broman
I like Russian trucks; they have that old school look
with the ability to get the job done under austere conditions.
I also like green, it’s one of my favorite colors, are you
seeing a match made in heaven here? One other thing I like is
going to hobby shops, in this case, Great Lakes Hobby which is
on my way home from work. I have this theory about karma; bad
day at work, good day at the hobby shop, in this case, crappy
day at work, and I find the new Bronco GAZ 69 on the shelf.
Once again, all is right in the world. A bit of warning
though, this is the SKP mold, not a new Bronco production.
This is not a bad thing, as SKP are pretty good and getting
better, and their releases are not easy to find here in the
States. The GAZ 69 is a child of the 50’s, production started
at the Gorky Automobil Zavod in 1953. This particular model is
the M, or export series. In one version or another, it stayed
in production to the early 70’s. GM should be so lucky. The
vehicle was used by the Soviets, their client states, and was
widely exported to third world countries for twenty years.
What I’m trying to say here, is that the potential variety of
color and marking schemes is epic. So what do we have in the
box? The first thing I noticed was the high speed razzu
instruction booklet. These are very nice, with a color
painting of a GAZ 69 on the front page. The instructions are
in English, German and Chinese. A business weenie could
probably discern a marketing plan here, but I digress. A note
of caution on the German translation, “funkfahrzeug” means
“radio vehicle”, it has nothing to do with smell. I can
guarantee that after a few days in the field with the troops,
any military vehicle with an enclosed space has a certain
level of lurking funk. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
The instructions are the exploded diagram type that appears
clear and easy to follow. Your mileage may vary. Construction
starts with the chassis, the frame is a single part, which
should help everything stay square. The engine looks sweet,
with some PE parts included, like the radiator fan. Unless you
pop the hood, you will be the only one that knows that you
have accurately modeled the correct timing sequence with the
correct Sverdlov Shparkplug Zavod blue electrical wires. Your
secret will be safe with us, Comrade. Once the engine is
complete, the body work begins, and this is no girly man body
here. This is a multi-part chassis, although I would recommend
deviating from the instructions and leaving the wheels off
until after painting. I realize that one must always follow
the assembly plan exactly as written on Russian vehicles,
deviation from the norm is not permitted, but whatcha gonna
do? Send me to Michigan for the winter? Anyway, the wheel
assemblies are an interesting two part affair that may look
very good when glued together, they are designed to keep the
seam off the center tread. As you start putting the body
together, you start running into options, doors on, doors off,
windshield up or down, and canvas tilt on or off. This bad boy
even has PE sun visors for those Crimean summer holiday trips.
If you are indecisive, your best bet is to just buy six, build
every option and go wild with the potentially huge number of
possible camo schemes. I’m leaning towards the Serbo-Croatian
Border Guards 12 tone splinter scheme. The last page on the
instructions is another color painting of a Chinese police
vehicle circa 1950-60 and a color picture of a vehicle in the
Dalian museum in China with a cool looking hood ornament. Who
knew the Gang of Four was going Gucci? There is also a
separate full color sheet with markings for three more
vehicles, East Germany, USSR and General Pavlovski’s command
vehicle for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It never hurts to
have a flash ride when you are performing your
internationalist duty. The one drawback? They are all in “dark
olive green”. I’m sure a trip to the internet will yield
something with a splash of color for the more adventurous
among us. So let’s talk parts, these are nicely molded and
some will be a challenge to remove from the sprue. I’ve become
a big fan of PE razor saws for those delicate parts that an X-acto
knife would eviscerate. The clear parts are nicely molded, but
are a bit thick. There is a small PE fret and all of the parts
look usable, unlike some of those PART and EDUARD sets that
require three hands and a neurosurgeons eyesight and manual
dexterity to fold. Overall, a very nice effort without any
visible sink marks or ejector pins holes. Did I mention the
Concord book? Bronco are including one of the old Concord
series books in each box. They are marked on the wrapping. A
word of caution before you go getting all excited, these are
older books from five or more years ago that didn’t sell. In
my last two kits I had one on the 10th Mountain from 2005 and
a Special Ops Journal from around 2004. Neither one tripped my
trigger, but they may be useful for trading bait, and hey,
nice thought on Bronco’s part for throwing it in to sweeten
the deal. Overall, this looks like a great kit that will repay
some careful assembly and painting. I’m also happy with the
choice of subject, although I like German stuff as much as the
next guy, how many versions of the Foosbane Sturmpickle Mark
IV paper panzers do we really need? Roll on Bronco. |
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