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Warrrrup guys The Spirit has arrived. I admire this plane much, no doubt about it, and never build it as a model before, and heard only good things about the new Modelcollect`s release, and pretty much that`s the story... i hooked. I could say that i`m on a great Northrop wave along with my other build of the F-23A. I`m just about sure of the title - the Spirit of NY, cause one i definitely love this state and two - because of the plane`s previous nicknames (before the Block 30 upgrades) "The Shady Lady" and "The Ghost". About the kit - hmmm, not the perfect kit, but keeping in mind its simplicity - i gotta make it real good. There is plenty of plastic in the surfaces; they are very thick, which will make the thinning of the trailing edges way easier. Cause they do need thinning if you want to make them perfect. The plastic is from a very good quality indeed, besides from the enormous panel lines, but they can be easily improved too. The manual is a complete waste of money in my opinion. The colorful glossy pages are a nice approach, but for what - only to show the 1-color paint scheme?! And it looks so thick, because the pages are thick (very), and not that it has plenty of pages. The decals offer 3 airframes: Just an overview of the parts - nothing exceptional for a 1/72 scale kit. Packaging - 10 out of 10 - a huge box stuffed with sprues and parts - large and tiny, and it is a 1/72 kit. And some proper enjoyment of the dimensions along with the fuselage of the 1/48 F-23 Plenty of space for weathering....

Hi all You know those times in life when everything seems to happen all at once and actually works for you - not the other way around? For me, this build has brought with it quite a few good things to me over the past couple of days and it's given me some much needed good joy in something not real life related. Hard to believe a plastic model kit could give anyone that much joy, and you'd be right - the kit itself won't, it's more the circumstances and life timing surrounding the kit purchase and build, that makes a kit more enjoyable or not I need a B-2A for Melbourne Expo this year, and I had stupidly promised one to go in the display. All I had on hand was of course the Testors one which I started in 2016 but stalled it due to other projects that held more sway over my time.This promise was the chance I needed to stop procrastinating and just get it done. To be fair to myself, I'd had a fair crack at it! Scratch built the cockpit, had started doing the bomb bays and I had even managed to do something that apparently beats many people who have tried this kit; I got seamless wing joints. Yeah baby! It was going so well until one day 3 weeks ago, when I accidentally broke the right wing off when it got caught between me and a doorway. Needless to say, I was not the happiest person around, so it went back into The Bin of an Uncertain Future Life went on and one event led to me visiting the LHS which led to this rather long winded thread. Sorry about that - It was a cool modelling story to me So, what do you get for your $199.99AU? Looking at the sprues - for a brand new modern kit of the De-classified B-2, the detail is surprisingly a little bland and maybe even a bit vanilla - especially when your used to the quality of detail supplied by Zvezda or Hasegawa etc. I think even Revell could do better here. Don't get me wrong, compared to the well known and bashed alternative, ANYTHING in 72nd is going to be better than that, so it's not exactly a fair comparison but at the same time, I think they could have added a few more details to both the kit and the instructions - especially when your charging what you are for it. But please don't get me wrong, the detail that is there is great. It looks the part and is a great template to start with for those wanting to go the whole super detailing route as there's plenty of scope for wires and pipes etc. I've even added a couple of pipes and wires to the back of the cockpit. I have no idea at all if they're actually meant to be there or not but I wanted visual interest. Bugger realism . They did forget the toilet though. Unforgivable. You even get a colour PE fret for the instrument panels. They have great detail and best of all, they're in colour! And of course I don't have a matching colour for the rest of the cockpit but who cares? The control sticks are very under sized though and if they were that comparatively small in the real craft, the pilots would be in physio for life after one flight. However, in saying that, it's not the be all end all because you can't see any of them through the windows anyway. I am using the resin ejector seats I have left over from the Testors build because I already have them and it'd be a waste of money not to use them. Interestingly though - there is a noticeable size difference between the 2 kits, so parts interchange will never work . Not that you'd want the put anything Testors into the ModelCollect but I was thinking more about the photo etch from Eduard. (It's too big) You get a big thick, glossy instruction book with some fairly basic diagrams and absolutely no colour call outs what so ever. Anywhere. I guess MC think that the buyers of this kit will ALL know without a shadow of a doubt what the colour of the back of the cockpit is. I chose a gray that's probably meant for an F-15, but this will be wrong as I am not an officiardo of anything so had a guess. Who needs the Internet? The wings are good to. They have a very solid feel to them without being too heavy. Separate slats, flaps and slaps - each one with it's own sink mark to take care of if you want to open or drop something. The flaps etc all sit nicely together and even stay there without the use of glue. Not Bandai quality fit but good enough. However, on dry fitting, the wings against the main body show that they may need some filler. Time will tell... Nothing I have done on this build has required filling yet. The fit is amazing, even without locator holes, plugs or tabs. Everything seems to slot nicely together and I have yet to find any niggles worth enough effort to dampen any spirits over. Another good thing about this kit is that the included details do not appear to be at all mythical and are at least bare something of a resemblance to the real thing. I have just looked up at what I've written and am thinking now's a good time for the pics. So, here's a few sprue and current build pics of the new B-2A Stealth Sorry - have to do this in 2 parts: too many pics