Accurate Miniatures Vought SB2U Vindicator build
Komentáře
25 26 August 2022, 22:45
Hanno KleineckeVery good detailing in the cockpit ! Watching with great interest, as this one is on my list as well.
Not the best fit at the fuselage/wing joint ?
13 September 2022, 17:26
Boris BHello Hanno, Thank you for the compliment. I try to keep a balance between accuracy and visibility in my detailing... and my skill, of course !
The fit of the model is (surprisingly) good overall, if a lot of precaution is taken in building. But the fit of the fuselage to wing root at the front of the aircraft is a place where there is an obvious gap, and I'm pretty sure it's not my building. Still, it's not much and a bit of filling will do the trick.
14 September 2022, 17:00
Boris BBy the way, I have a SB2U-3 kit, but I want to build a SB2U-1/2, with different cowling and shorter empennage. If anybody wants to trade those parts to build a Marines aircraft (for instance at Midway), let me know!
20 September 2022, 17:31
Michael .I'm working on my first Accurate Miniatures kit right now myself. I was amazed at the kit.
20 September 2022, 18:10
JohnI've never built one, are the Accurate Miniature kits all they're cracked up to be? Some kits better than others?
20 September 2022, 18:23
Michael .Most of the kits I've built so far are Revell and Testors. The AM kit blows them all away. I haven't made many other kits, yet...
20 September 2022, 18:36
JohnI was looking over products and it seems I do have an AM kit in the stash. Apparently the Eduard P-39s are AM molds, so I look forward to seeing how it goes together.
20 September 2022, 18:48
Boris BMichael, the AM Avenger kit looks like a very good one, maybe better than this one, but apparently the same vagueness in the instructions means a lot of test-fitting is needed too. And yes, the level is defintely beyond Revell (at least the older kits) and Testors. But recent kit (from eduard, for instance) would be yet another level above (at the price of many, many tiny parts).
John, for the P-39 kit, it's the other way around : eduard designed it and Accurate Miniatures re-boxed it, at a point where they were not designing kits anymore (financial troubles, I suppose). But that is also not the eduard of the 2020's and their rendition of classic airplanes that blow (most of) the competition away.
22 September 2022, 14:32
Michael .Boris,
I do agree on the vagueness of the instructions. Sometimes what they show doesn't match with how it actually fits together and as you say, a lot of test fitting before I put glue to plastic.
I bought my first Eduard kit a couple of months ago. I'm waiting to start it. But my modelling is on hold at the moment since we had a fire in my house in the office where I do my modelling. That room is not blocked off and they'll bet getting rid of all our furniture and we have to redo the office. Just when I got my work area the way I wanted it.
22 September 2022, 14:36
Boris BSorry to hear that... how frustrating ! But it sounds like the fire was quite limited, which is the main part.
Regarding the eduard kits, the quality has improved steadfastly over the years, from early kits that were so mediocre that they eventually re-made them (or dropped them altogether), to their recent renditions of the great classics that are apparently so good that they warrant having yet another kit of Spitfires, Mustangs and Me 109s.
The ones I have built (Me 108, Polikarpov i-16,...) were not quite at that level, with some inaccuracies and oversights, but they are from their 'middle' period, when they were making the best kits of rarer planes and so could get away with less-than-perfect.
22 September 2022, 15:16
JohnHi Boris, thanks for the info. It's sometimes hard to tell who is boxing whose sprues and when! I wasn't checking the kit history closely enough and now see that yes, it was initially Eduard. I know it's not newer Eduard but it still looks pretty good in their recent P-39Q release.
If I do an AM kit, I think I'd like to try one of their B-25s, go big or go home.
22 September 2022, 15:19
Boris BYes, their P-39 kit is the best in that scale, I believe. I should be a good build !
22 September 2022, 15:24
RandoSuch a nice build, for as frustrating as this kit sounds every step looks beautifully done. I have an AM P-51A with a Verlinden engine that I plan to build in the near-ish future.
7 November 2023, 02:57
Boris BHi Rando, glad you find the build interesting. I suppose not many people build this not-very-successful and not-very-pretty airplane ! 😉
I hope I don't sound too whiny, as I wouldn't say that the build is frustrating overall (even if the instructions are). It's satisfying insofar as the result promises to be on a par with the effort put into it (and that's what model building is about, no ?).
Out of the box, there are pitfalls to avoid by testing for fit an placement before gluing, but the result would be quite ok. I chose to go the extra mile because I enjoy the detailing and the research behind it. That's the core of my comments about AM's general idea to do molded-on detail instead of multiplying extra parts. It's laudable in principle, but I prefer to remove some of it that I find too soft and replace it with scratch-built.
Still, OOB, these AM kits remain top of their class after many years (even when they are not rare birds : for ex. the SBD, the TBD, the B25, the early Mustangs, I suppose), because of their detailing but mostly because of the general quality of the molding as well as their... accuracy, of course.
7 November 2023, 10:39
Album info
This is my first Accurate Miniatures kit, and I was interested to see what top kits of the 90's amount to today...
Well, the answer seems to be that while AM may have been a fine heir to the Monogram kits of the 80's, including better detailing, the emphasis on molded details means a loss of precision compared to today's best kits (and their very high part count, including tiny, tiny ones).
What was lost from Monogram, unfortunately, was the clarity in the instructions. As a result, the placement of parts can be puzzling. Looking at the built-up kits of the AM Vindicator, you can see a lot of errors in placement (and probably fit too), which can be traced clearly to this problem.
But, with a lot of trial and error, the fit that ends up being suprisingly good (surprisingly, because at first it looks like it won't work, until you figure it out).
So, with a bit of modelling skill, the proverbial patience of test-and-retest-before-gluing (and re-building a few thickish parts if you feel like it), a very nice model can be made.
As for the Accuracy of the name, well, it's too bad the wings are quite fanciful on this one (the fabric rendition is completely off, and detailing is odd in parts). More modelling fun to rectify that !
