Aftermarket sets to
improve vacuformed kits are rare to nonexistent.
As such it comes as a welcome surprise to find Lone Star
Models (LSM) offering of a resin engine upgrade set for the out
of production ID models, and still available Tigger Models 1/48
scale P-3 kits.
I
personally started one of these vacuformed monsters about a year
and a half ago. One
of the weakest points of a very sparse kit, and very prominent
on the real P-3 airframe are the huge turboprop engines with
their multiple air inlets and large paddle bladed propellers.
Due to the limitations of the vacuformed plastic medium,
the nacelles in the kit come in two halves with no hint of
opening areas and the propellers are flat uniform thickness
blobs. Knowing
these areas were weak in kit form, joined in a short discussion
with Mike West, owner of LSM about how best to go about making
resin masters to recreate these areas with better detail and
shape-fully intending to make my own masters and cast them.
Using the on line forum, Mike not only explained about
available mediums for making the masters, he created them for my
viewing pleasure.
Wow… a dream come true!
With enough initial interest and commitments to purchase
the kit, Mike finished up his new masters with proper propellers
and hubs and offered them up for sale at a very reasonable
price.
What you get with LSM kit
are four large resin castings of the engine nacelles, four hubs,
and 16 resin propeller blades all packaged in three small
individual plastic bags.
The
nacelle castings are fantastic, with no pin holes or casting
flaws present. You
get two inner nacelles with landing gear bay bulges, and two
outer nacelles.
They come with a nice stepped pour plug at the top that acts as
a wonderful alignment and gluing surface to mate with the kit
upper wing parts.
The builder will need to trim these plugs back on the inner
nacelles if scale wheel bays are created, as they will extend
into the upper forward bay areas by about three eighths of an
inch. Panel line
detail is present, but sparse.
The lines are very petite, but suffer from being
indistinct in spots. The inlet openings are large, but do have
some depth that creates the illusion of space as seen on the
real aircraft.
Although not perfect, the masters adequately capture the essence
of the P-3 engines.
Fit appears to be spot on, but as I was less than perfect with
my sanding I will need to shim my wing halves to meet the resin
parts for height.
Filling will be necessary no matter how much care is taken to
seamlessly integrate the nacelles onto the kit parts, but that
should not intimidate anyone attempting to build on of these
kits.
The
hubs provided by LSM look like P-3 propeller hubs.
The pour stubs on the back will require sanding for a
flush fit.
Diameters match the nacelle fronts correctly.
Resin propellers can be
tricky.
Fortunately, Mike seems to have system that works as I could not
find even one blade that was warped or misshapen.
There is some resin flash to clean up, but the blades are
consistent and blemish free; a real time saver.
No locking system is present and care will need to be
taken to get the blades at a proper angle/pitch and length.
Again, not a serious construction issue for a builder
undertaking a kit of this sort.
The Lone Star Models 1/48
P-3 engine update set is a rare gem that will unfortunately
appeal to a very limited few modelers that attempt the ID/Tigger
vacuformed kits.
The castings are top notch and really make an improvement over
the kit parts.
Additionally, this set is worth every penny in the time and
detail it saves for the modeler.
Highly recommended.
Please note-the 1/48 P-3 kit is not listed on the LSM
website; just send Mike an email at
lsmodels@pdq.net
with your request.