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KIT: |
Italeri 1/72 F-21A Kfir |
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KIT # |
158 |
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PRICE: |
$12.00 |
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DECALS: |
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REVIEW & |
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NOTES: |
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HISTORY |
The F-21A has a very unusual history. It is one of the few fighter aircraft the US has had in its inventory that have been leased. Back in the 1980, the Falklands War was recently over and planners realized that there were aircraft types that they had no experience against. One of them was the Mirage family of delta winged aicraft. The Navy and Marine Corps were looking for an aggressor aircraft that would do a good job of simulating that type, and with nothing left in the inventory, contracted to the Israeli Air Force to provide aircraft and technicians. The result was the leasing of around 20 aircraft for a four or five year period of time.
These aircraft were early model Kfirs which had been pulled out of service and were awaiting buyers. They has very small canards on the intake trunking and were basically Kfir 2s. The two units that flew the Kfir were VMFAT-401 at Yuma, AZ and VF-43 at Oceana, VA. The aircraft never received USN serials, instead using the manufacturers serial number. They were painted in a variety of interesting schemes, however what I call 'ghost glop' of blues and greys was the most popular.
The aircraft served their role well and when the lease term was finished, the aircraft were returned to Israel. To my knowledge, none were ever lost.
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THE KIT |
This kit is up to Italeri's stanadards of the late 1980s with engraved panel lines, a pretty decent cockpit and well detailed ancillary parts such as weapons, landing gear, wheel wells and the like. The kit comes with decals for VF-43 in the overall ghost glop paint scheme of greys and blues.
The instructions are well done with several steps using the typical exploded drawings to show parts location. Painting instructions are good with FS numbers given for the camo scheme and some of the other bits and pieces.
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CONSTRUCTION |
Since it has been a number of years since I built this kit, there isn't a great deal of detail that I can tell you about the kit except for its trouble spots. The first one is the intake trunks. For some reason, kit makers have been unable to design a kit with side mounted intakes where the trunking isn't a bit of a problem. As with many of these kits, I needed filler on the aft portion of the intakes in order to smooth them into the surrounding fuselage.
The next area of problem was the wing/fuselage join. Again, a fair amount of filler was needed at the front part of the wing as well as the upper surface to get a good blend in with the fuselage. One would think that this type of kit could be molded with the upper wings as part of the fuselage, but then that gets into the problems of designing how the nose section will fit. Guess there really isn't any cut and dried answer to this quandary except for careful fitting and filler where needed.
Unlike the Heller Mirage III kits, the Kfir has well detailed and sturdy landing gear. Thanks to a raised lip around the wheel, painting the tires isn't the chore it can be on other kits. As for stuff hanging from the aircraft, one is limited to a centerline fuel tank and outer wing missile pylons. On these pylons are attached blue acquisition rounds which transmit data to the range computer for later downloading to check over the flight's parameters.
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PAINT & DECALS |
With no aftermarket
decals available for this kit, one is pretty well stuck with whatever scheme is
in the box. In this case it is three shades of grey and blue-grey in a random
pattern. I masked off the kit when I did the several colors and it seems to work
well in this scale, though those who are airbrush wizards will want to free-hand
the scheme. I used Gunze Acrylics for all the external camo colors and
they worked very well indeed.
For decals, again I was at the mercy of the kit supplied ones. They worked very well and reacted well to the Solvaset solution I was using at the time. These were for an aircraft with VF-43 at Oceana, and one that I have a photo of somewhere.
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CONCLUSIONS |
Overall, this is a very nice kit of a rather unusual aircraft. It is odd that Italeri never used this mold as a basis for a decent 1/72 Mirage III/V series, but I guess the wings and fuselage are too different to allow that kind of kit crossover. Recommended for those with some experience due to wing and intake trunk fit problems.
May 2000
Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet!
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