The Silver Wings kit looks amazing in the box, but really is a tiny aircraft. The entire plane takes up less area than a standard piece of 8.5" x 11" paper, the normal printer stuff. But what is in the box is really amazing, the detail is very sharp and well cast. None of the parts are numbered, but careful study of the instructions should give you a good idea of what everything is, and where it all goes. The resin looks very strong, which is good for someone like me, who tends to break stuff, and all of the struts are reinforced with metal cores, which should go a long way to keeping the assembly secure. Every thing comes wrapped in separate Zip-Lock bags, and most of the parts are wrapped in bubble wrap, which is a huge plus for Silver Wings, good to see they care about how their parts ship.
I hope to get a jump on construction tomorrow, since I spent most of this afternoon giving everything a bath in soapy water, which I've read is what you do with resin kits, and doing some very light flash clean-up. Painting should begin tomorrow, I'm following the instructions here, but if anyone knows the exact colors of the Flycatcher cockpit, I'd love to hear it.
Nice box art, nothing spectacular, but still nice. The box is much smaller than expected, about the same size as the 1/48 Tamiya Corsair box(I'm building the model for my girlfriend's birthday). But then again, the plane is not very substantial
The first parts you see are the fuselage halves, with no casting blocks, and they are taped together to stop them jostling around, and to show their great fit. Just a little bit of sanding should be needed on the bottom seam to remove some resin bits from the casting process. Nice framing detail that will be wood-grained to give some nice contrast, and the side doors will be open so you can see inside.
The next bag contains the wing parts, and these are nothing short of amazing. This is probably the best fabric detail I've seen on any kit except for a few Wingnuts kits, and the metal wire and locating pins should make assembly super easy. There is some tiny remnants of the casting blocks on the back of the wing and ailerons, but it should be easy to true it all up.
The third bag contains six smaller bags holding the rest of the parts.
Here are all six of the bags containing all of the tiny parts, and you can see in the second photo the wire core added to all of the struts. I will have to make sure to remove any excess resin from the wires in order to make everything fit perfectly. I don't foresee any problems with construction yet, but I usually find a way to mess something up along the way.
Nice little sprue of photo-etch containing the instrument panel and the fabric stitching. This is a cool effect, since the stitching should be raised above the surface, and it should give a different metal tone if it's added at the end.
One note about the instrument panel, it is not entirely accurate for an in-service Flycatcher. It is based on a restored bird, but there are no originals out there, just a couple of pictures and drawings. If you want to scratch-build your own panel, there are drawings on Silver Wings' website to help with that. But the panel will be buried deep in the fuselage, so probably will not be seen once construction is done. Just a note for anyone who buys this kit, this is the only real miss for them, but I understand that the bird they measured had the restored panel.
Edited by scvrobeson, 04 July 2012 - 07:33 AM.
