Moulded in
Italeri's usual light gray plastic this is, I'm told,
a re-release of the Esci kit and is a fairly decent rendition
of the "Short Little Ugly Fella" or "Short
Little Ugly F***er", depending on who you talk to.
Italeri aren't telling how many pieces are in the box
and I have better things to do with my time than counting
bits of plastic so suffice to say, you get a nice full
box of styrene for your six quid. The box is one of those
awful "part losing" end opening types that Italeri
insists on using depite the fact that everyone loathes
them - myself included. There is a fairly dramatic, if
somewhat simplistic, artists rendition on the front and
pictures of a built up model on the box sides, which I
think is a first for Italeri.
Click on thumbnails for the bigger
picture.
The real aircraft was 46' 1 1/2" (14.06m) long with
a wingspan of 38' 9" (11.80m) according to my references
and the kit does fairly well in comparison. The span is
spot on but the length is a scale 7 1/2" short, the
deficiency being between the leading edge of the wing
and the rear of the cockpit. That amounts to about 3/32
of an inch in the real world so I'll leave it up to you
if you want to correct it. Personally I don't think I'll
bother. Test fitting the major components reveals no fit
problems and it looks like an A-7 - that's good enough
for me.
The cockpit is completely
devoid of detail, with decals for the instrument and side
panels and a very simplistic seat. The landing gear is
however quite decent with some nicely moulded detail and
it captures the robust look of the original very well.
Underwing stores consist
of two drop tanks, two Sidewinders, two Sparrows, ten
bombs and a couple of other missiles. I'll readily admit
I don't know much about modern weapons so I'm not sure
what the other missiles are. They look nice though....
Four
decal options are included. The spiffy looking VA-93 example
on the box art plus VA-87, VA-147 and a lo-viz aircraft
from VA-86. The decals are well printed and in register
and look quite thin on the sheet. I've always found Italeri
decals to be excellent with good colour density and adhesion
and I have no reason to think these will be any different.
Other than the box, I have two major complaints with this
kit, or more precisely, with Italeri:
1) They insist on moulding jet intakes as flat blanks
with no depth. They did it with their F-100 and they've
done it with this and it looks like crap. You can kind
of get away with it on an aircraft that has fairly small
intakes like the F-5 or the F9F Panther, but let's face
it, the main focal point of the A-7 is that huge gaping
intake on the front! Yes I know that this is how Esci
moulded it originally and that tooling an intake trunking
and engine fan would add to the cost but frankly I wouldn't
mind paying a bit extra for them. Granted, Italeri do
include an intake cover with this kit but I still think
it's a cop-out.
2) All the sprues are rattling around loose in the box.
I have yet to open an Italeri kit that doesn't have parts
off the sprues (add that to the end opening box and you
have a sure fire way of losing bits) and scratched clear
parts. This one went one better and the canopy has a large
crack in it to go with its scrapes and scratches.
Six weeks and several emails later and I have yet to receive
a replacement, being told that the kit was out of stock
but due in any day now and I would have new parts
as soon as possible. Sometime before my retirement would
be nice....**
All in all, a pretty nice model in a pretty awful box.
Price is very reasonable and with a bit of extra detailing
a very nice Corsair ll can be built from this kit but
please Italeri, start packaging these things better and
give us some decent intakes like you did with the Boeing
X-32.
References:
Modelaid Quarterly International
Special Model Engineer Issue 1984
Combat Aircraft of the
World
John W.R. Taylor 1969
Four
decal options are included. The spiffy looking VA-93 example
on the box art plus VA-87, VA-147 and a lo-viz aircraft
from VA-86. The decals are well printed and in register
and look quite thin on the sheet. I've always found Italeri
decals to be excellent with good colour density and adhesion
and I have no reason to think these will be any different.
Six weeks and several emails later and I have yet to receive
a replacement, being told that the kit was out of stock
but due in any day now and I would have new parts
as soon as possible. Sometime before my retirement would
be nice....**
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