The Ukrainian firm, Roden, has released an injected molded 1/72 scale kit of the AJ-1. The kit comes in a sturdy top opening cardboard box. Upon opening the box, I was struck by the size of the fuselage halves. This will be a large 1/72 model when finished. The kit has 159 parts molded in gray styrene and three parts molded in clear styrene. The clear parts include a one piece windshield/canopy and two landing light lenses. The panel lines are recessed. The 12 pages of instructions use black and white drawings to illustrate 39 construction steps. 37 parts are used to assemble a very detailed cockpit. The
crew's seats do not have belts/shoulder harnesses molded on them nor are decals or photo etched
representations provided. A detailed bomb bay is included, but the doors are molded in one piece.
Presumably they could be cut apart to show off the interior of the bay, but the instructions don't address
the issue and no representations of the hinges are provided. The conventional bombs provided don't look
like any U.S. ordinance that I have seen. They look more like WWII Luftwaffe weapons. A representation
of a Mk4 nuclear bomb is provided along with its ground handling cart. All of the wheels/tires are molded
in halves and have nice hub details. Only the forward row of the R2800's cylinders is provided, but, to be
fair, that should be adequate given how closely cowled the engines are.The propeller blades are molded
separately from the hubs/spinners. The crew access door is molded separately with the provision to pose
it open or closed. If posed open, the kit provides a ladder that attaches to the interior of the door. The nose landing gear bay is molded as a flat piece that has to have the sides and ends folded up to form an
enclosure. No mention of how much weight will be needed to keep the model from being a tail sitter and
it looks like space for placing ballast will be at a premium. All of the landing gear legs are multi part
assemblies with separate, torque links, and retraction jacks. Three decal options are provided. All three are
in Gloss Sea Blue color schemes. One option has white bands around the wings and rear fuselage and
another option has “ichi ban” in white script on both sides of the forward fuselage. Otherwise, the
markings appear to be standard for post WWII USN aircraft. Decals are also provided for the wing
walkways and some of the stencilling.

Surprisingly, the instructions have construction start by joining the upper and lower halves of the wings
and horizontal stabilizers to each other. This is followed by series of steps for assembling the engine
nacelles complete with the engines, main landing gear bays, and the main landing gear. It isn't until step
16 before the sequence of steps for building the cockpit begins. Once the cockpit is assembled, the
remainder of the kit's construction proceeds in a fairly conventional pattern. No explanation is offered for
the unusual start to the assembly sequence, but I can't say that I find anything wrong with doing it Roden's
way.