Lockheed RF-80A Shooting Star
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Kit Review
by Richard Page
In the box you get one clear and five grey-coloured sprues, a small photo-etched fret (seat belts) and a small decal sheet. There is an instruction booklet with nine build stages and a separate markings and paint guide with four full colour drawings of the top, bottom and two sides of the jet. There is also a small colour guide with paint callouts for Mr Hobby paints and the equivalent paint numbers for Vallejo, Model Master, Tamiya and Humbrol where matching paints are available.
Construction
The build starts with the cockpit. The seat is made up using seven plastic and eight photo-etched parts, which build up into an acceptable seat. HobbyBoss provide decals for the instrument panel and sidewalls and these are very basic just comprising black backgrounds with white details. I used the decal for the instrument panel and was pleasantly surprised that it looked quite good once the decal had settled onto the plastic detail. I decided to not use the sidewall ones though as the detail was very sparse and it was easier to paint. The details in the cockpit is very basic but looks OK through a closed canopy. If you want to add more detail there are several photo-etched sets available from Eduard. The next three steps in the instructions are to make the landing gear, I decided to leave these steps to the end of the build as I didn’t want to break off the various doors and fragile parts whilst handling the model through the remaining build, masking and painting stages. The full engine and jet pipe is included in the kit, although a nice touch, I thought that this was superfluous as once the fuselage halves are joined together, you do not see anything other than the very end of the jet pipe. The kit also provides parts which block the air intakes so no detail of the engine can be seen through the air intakes at all. I did wonder at the logic of having a large heavy section of plastic hidden in the rear section when the model is a tail sitter to start with. I considered cutting the engine section off and using just the visible part of the jet pipe to reduce the weight at the back of the model, however, I chose to build the model as per the instructions. The fuselage was made up of four parts with the rear section made up of two parts that enclosed the engine and jet pipe. The front fuselage halves enclose the cockpit and nose undercarriage. Having additional fuselage parts did create extra seam lines to be dealt with, luckily the joins were fairly good and a minimum of sanding and filler was required. You are instructed to add weight to the nose before closing up the front section of the fuselage, unfortunately there is no indication in the instructions of how much weight is to be added. I waited until I had joined all the main components of the model together (fuselage, wings and tail plane) before adding the required weight. I found the right balance by putting shortened cocktail sticks in the main undercarriage slots and adding lead pellets through the camera window in the nose, which I had left off for this task. When the nose fell forward and the tail was in the air, I knew that I had found the right amount of weight. The wheel wells and air brake housings are added to the lower wing section and the detail is quite good although once again, extra detail is available through aftermarket photo-etched sets. The tanks at the wing tips were made up of two parts each and needed a bit of filler and sanding as the joins were not very good and quite prominent: I kept these separate for painting.
Colour Options
There is only one decal option provided in the kit. Unfortunately the instructions nor markings guide confirm the identity of the aircraft or squadron it represents. The undersides colour was for Neutral Grey and I used Tamiya XF-19 Sky grey because I found Tamiya XF-53 Neutral grey to be too dark. Be wary when painting the tanks at the end of the wings as the colour plans are very confusing in regards to the demarcation. The underside view shows that all of the underside of the tank is neutral grey, however, the side views and top view shows that the Olive Drab camouflage flares down from the wing and wraps around the front and back tips of the tank. The colour plan also shows the sides of the tanks (and main undercarriage doors) as being a darker grey, more like XF-53 Neutral Grey. As far as I can tell they are showing that these areas are in shadow but it does add unnecessary additional confusion.
I decide not to use the two decal provided for the yellow band on the tail, as I have found in the past on different kits that this type of decal often does not cover the whole area of the tail, leaving me with the leading and trailing edges of the tail uncovered, which ruins the final look. I cannot say if this is would be the case with this model, however, I did not want to risk it so I sprayed the tail first with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White as a base coat followed by Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow, which gave a better full wraparound finish. Once the paint had cured and a coat of Johnson's Klear had been applied and dried I masked it off with Tamiya tape ready for the top colour to be added. I used Tamiya XF-62 Olive Drab for the upper camouflage colour and because the area was so large, I was concerned about the single dark colour being too uniform I lightly sprayed the topside of the model with Olive Drab lightened with white to try and add a bit of variation to the overall look.
There is not a high number of decals provided, however I found that if you do not place them in the correct position first time, there is very little play in them and it is nearly impossible to move a misplaced decal even after adding extra water directly to the model. The only way I found to lift a decal was to use a wet brush to hook under the edge and to use the brush to move it. The yellow and red band around the rear of the fuselage is a perfect example of how difficult this was. The upside of these decals is that they did bed down very well onto the model and into the panel lines after a couple of applications of Micro Sol.
I finished the model with a MIG Productions enamel wash to bring out the panel lines. I was surprised that when using enamel thinner and a tissue to remove the excess wash, the carrier film on the large decals disintegrated and came away, by lucky chance it resulted in the decal looking more like they had been painted on. I did over experiment with this on the upper wing national marking which resulted in the blue fading towards white, the national marking on the wing ended up looking a bit weathered, which was fine by me!
Final Construction
All that remained to be done was to add various easily broken bits to the model. The landing flaps were fitted, then I added the air brake mechanisms and doors and then fitted the landing gear and their associated doors. One thing to note is that the installation of parts E3 and E4 is missing from the instructions. You can see them on the drawings on the painting guide and it is obvious something is missing if you don’t fit them because there is a long length of exposed landing gear leg with a small section of the landing gear cover that looks odd. The last thing I added was the wing tip lights and tanks.
Conclusion
I enjoyed making this kit, the fit of the parts was very good and HobbyBoss have provided a nicely detailed kit. The location of the sprue gates were well thought out and resulted in a minimum of cleaning up to be done on any of the parts. Overall minimal sanding and filling was required on the wings and fuselage to produce a nice representation of the Shooting Star. I didn’t like the fact that the fuselage was made up of four parts rather than the usual two, as it seemed to be inviting loss of detail in any filling and sanding needed at the seam lines.
by Richard Page
In the box you get one clear and five grey-coloured sprues, a small photo-etched fret (seat belts) and a small decal sheet. There is an instruction booklet with nine build stages and a separate markings and paint guide with four full colour drawings of the top, bottom and two sides of the jet. There is also a small colour guide with paint callouts for Mr Hobby paints and the equivalent paint numbers for Vallejo, Model Master, Tamiya and Humbrol where matching paints are available.
Construction
The build starts with the cockpit. The seat is made up using seven plastic and eight photo-etched parts, which build up into an acceptable seat. HobbyBoss provide decals for the instrument panel and sidewalls and these are very basic just comprising black backgrounds with white details. I used the decal for the instrument panel and was pleasantly surprised that it looked quite good once the decal had settled onto the plastic detail. I decided to not use the sidewall ones though as the detail was very sparse and it was easier to paint. The details in the cockpit is very basic but looks OK through a closed canopy. If you want to add more detail there are several photo-etched sets available from Eduard. The next three steps in the instructions are to make the landing gear, I decided to leave these steps to the end of the build as I didn’t want to break off the various doors and fragile parts whilst handling the model through the remaining build, masking and painting stages. The full engine and jet pipe is included in the kit, although a nice touch, I thought that this was superfluous as once the fuselage halves are joined together, you do not see anything other than the very end of the jet pipe. The kit also provides parts which block the air intakes so no detail of the engine can be seen through the air intakes at all. I did wonder at the logic of having a large heavy section of plastic hidden in the rear section when the model is a tail sitter to start with. I considered cutting the engine section off and using just the visible part of the jet pipe to reduce the weight at the back of the model, however, I chose to build the model as per the instructions. The fuselage was made up of four parts with the rear section made up of two parts that enclosed the engine and jet pipe. The front fuselage halves enclose the cockpit and nose undercarriage. Having additional fuselage parts did create extra seam lines to be dealt with, luckily the joins were fairly good and a minimum of sanding and filler was required. You are instructed to add weight to the nose before closing up the front section of the fuselage, unfortunately there is no indication in the instructions of how much weight is to be added. I waited until I had joined all the main components of the model together (fuselage, wings and tail plane) before adding the required weight. I found the right balance by putting shortened cocktail sticks in the main undercarriage slots and adding lead pellets through the camera window in the nose, which I had left off for this task. When the nose fell forward and the tail was in the air, I knew that I had found the right amount of weight. The wheel wells and air brake housings are added to the lower wing section and the detail is quite good although once again, extra detail is available through aftermarket photo-etched sets. The tanks at the wing tips were made up of two parts each and needed a bit of filler and sanding as the joins were not very good and quite prominent: I kept these separate for painting.
Colour Options
There is only one decal option provided in the kit. Unfortunately the instructions nor markings guide confirm the identity of the aircraft or squadron it represents. The undersides colour was for Neutral Grey and I used Tamiya XF-19 Sky grey because I found Tamiya XF-53 Neutral grey to be too dark. Be wary when painting the tanks at the end of the wings as the colour plans are very confusing in regards to the demarcation. The underside view shows that all of the underside of the tank is neutral grey, however, the side views and top view shows that the Olive Drab camouflage flares down from the wing and wraps around the front and back tips of the tank. The colour plan also shows the sides of the tanks (and main undercarriage doors) as being a darker grey, more like XF-53 Neutral Grey. As far as I can tell they are showing that these areas are in shadow but it does add unnecessary additional confusion.
I decide not to use the two decal provided for the yellow band on the tail, as I have found in the past on different kits that this type of decal often does not cover the whole area of the tail, leaving me with the leading and trailing edges of the tail uncovered, which ruins the final look. I cannot say if this is would be the case with this model, however, I did not want to risk it so I sprayed the tail first with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White as a base coat followed by Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow, which gave a better full wraparound finish. Once the paint had cured and a coat of Johnson's Klear had been applied and dried I masked it off with Tamiya tape ready for the top colour to be added. I used Tamiya XF-62 Olive Drab for the upper camouflage colour and because the area was so large, I was concerned about the single dark colour being too uniform I lightly sprayed the topside of the model with Olive Drab lightened with white to try and add a bit of variation to the overall look.
There is not a high number of decals provided, however I found that if you do not place them in the correct position first time, there is very little play in them and it is nearly impossible to move a misplaced decal even after adding extra water directly to the model. The only way I found to lift a decal was to use a wet brush to hook under the edge and to use the brush to move it. The yellow and red band around the rear of the fuselage is a perfect example of how difficult this was. The upside of these decals is that they did bed down very well onto the model and into the panel lines after a couple of applications of Micro Sol.
I finished the model with a MIG Productions enamel wash to bring out the panel lines. I was surprised that when using enamel thinner and a tissue to remove the excess wash, the carrier film on the large decals disintegrated and came away, by lucky chance it resulted in the decal looking more like they had been painted on. I did over experiment with this on the upper wing national marking which resulted in the blue fading towards white, the national marking on the wing ended up looking a bit weathered, which was fine by me!
Final Construction
All that remained to be done was to add various easily broken bits to the model. The landing flaps were fitted, then I added the air brake mechanisms and doors and then fitted the landing gear and their associated doors. One thing to note is that the installation of parts E3 and E4 is missing from the instructions. You can see them on the drawings on the painting guide and it is obvious something is missing if you don’t fit them because there is a long length of exposed landing gear leg with a small section of the landing gear cover that looks odd. The last thing I added was the wing tip lights and tanks.
Conclusion
I enjoyed making this kit, the fit of the parts was very good and HobbyBoss have provided a nicely detailed kit. The location of the sprue gates were well thought out and resulted in a minimum of cleaning up to be done on any of the parts. Overall minimal sanding and filling was required on the wings and fuselage to produce a nice representation of the Shooting Star. I didn’t like the fact that the fuselage was made up of four parts rather than the usual two, as it seemed to be inviting loss of detail in any filling and sanding needed at the seam lines.
