F-RSIN 1/144 Martin 202

Glenn L. Martin, president of the company, intended that the Model 2-0-2 would be a replacement for the Douglas DC-3. It was also known as the "Martin Executive".

The first flight of the model was in November 1946. Full civilian certification was gained in August 1947, several months before competing aircraft types. The total production of 2-0-2s and 2-0-2As was 47 aircraft.

The aircraft was not pressurized, but was considered a long-range airliner. The fatal crash in 1948 of Northwest Airlines Flight 421 revealed a serious structural problem in the wings. Structural metal fatigue was the problem in a major wing spar. Alloy 7075-T6 was used, which is susceptible to stress-corrosion cracking and low toughness. The airliner was grounded and modifications were made. The wing components were redesigned and the engines replaced. The changed type was designated the Martin 2-0-2A.

Allegheny Airlines (IATA: AL, ICAO: ALO, Call sign: ALLEGHENY) was a U.S. airline that operated out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, from 1952 to 1979. It was a forerunner of US Airways, now merged into American Airlines.

F-RSIN started by offering resin kits of a variety of aircraft, usually airliners. They still do this but have developed a line of short run plastic kits as well. Their kits are ones that are not for the weak of heart as they have large sprue gates, ejector towers on many parts, flash of some level on every part and often you'll find bits that are short shot. In many ways, similar to Mach 2 kits.

Once you get past all that, you'll find that the kits are not complex to build and once you have finished cleaning up parts, they go together fairly well. This kit offers a variety of radomes as you can see. There are no transparencies with all the windows being provided on the decal sheet. No indication of nose weight is offered in the instructions but you will need a goodly amount. Fortunately, there is a lot of room.

The kit offers the rear air stairs in a deployed position, despite there being zilch provided for the interior. Mine has one of the side supports short shot. Though the kit does not offer a decent retracted covering for this feature, I'll be building this with it raised.

Instructions are a single folded sheet with a history of the aircraft in French and English on one side. On the other is an exploded view of assembly. Despite the parts being numbered on the sprue, they are not in the assembly view. There is a full color decal placement profile for the two different schemes carried while in Allegheny service. This aircraft was also converted to a cargo hauler by Allegheny and you can build one of those as well if you so desire. The decal sheet has been printed on a laserjet printer so that means the white parts are missing. Not an issue if you have carefully masked your kit while painting. The sheet appears to be covered with a single coating of clear so all the markings will have to be closely cut prior to application. I would test one marking you won't be using to ensure that you don't need to apply another clear coat.  

These kits are not impossible to build, but will take careful construction and constant test fitting to get the best results. I am pleased to see kits of these sorts of aircraft released in injected plastic and would encourage those who are like minded to help keep the company going so we can see more of the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_2-0-2

December 2019

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