Hasegawa

1/48 TA-4J Skyhawk "Diamond Jubilee"

Kit Number: 09887

Reviewed by  Joe Hegedus, IPMS# 33868

MSRP: $57.99 Review kit provided by Dragon Models USA Website: www.dragonmodelsusa.com This is one of Hasegawa's standard TA-4J kits, reviewed previously here: IPMS TA-4 Review The only differences between that kit and this one are new box art, instructions, and decals. The markings, shown in fig 1, are for two schemes applied to celebrate the 75th anniversary of US Naval Aviation in 1986. The first, an overall blue jet with gold trim, is from VT-25, while the other, in white with 3 shades of blue trim, is from VT-7. I chose the VT-7 scheme as I've been waiting for about 24 years to build that particular airplane, ever since I saw a photo of it and got hold of an old Superscale decal sheet for that scheme. The only thing missing was a kit to put them on. Now that this kit is available, the Superscale sheet seems to be unnecessary, as the decals in the kit are very nicely printed. The scan for some reason didn't pick up the white in the national insignias, but they are white - proper white instead of the off-white that Hasegawa often uses on their decals. The kit sheet is one of Hasegawa's own, rather than being printed by Cartograph, as was the case on some other special releases. The decals are somewhat brittle, but are quite usable with care and lay down very nicely when applied using Superset and Supersol. The only thing that I would mention regarding this build is that the masking for the dark blue is rather tricky to properly get into place. The medium and light blues are primarily accomplished using decals, as are the dark blue stripes that go along the belly on either side of the nose wheel well. However, the dark blue on the nose and external tanks as well as on the fin must be painted. Masking the fin is pretty straightforward. The nose and tanks, on the other hand, are rather difficult. I attempted to use the scan of the decal to make templates for the medium/light blue sections and mask the dark blue from that, but I still needed to go back after decaling and touch up the dark blue as I didn't get the demarcation in the right place and had quite a bit of white showing where it shouldn't. Fortunately, Parafilm is safe to use to mask over decals so I laid that down, trimmed it to the edge of the decal with a new blade, and touched up the dark blue. For the anti-glare panel, I robbed the decal from a standard-release TA-4J rather than masking and painting, although the wing walks were painted. Overall, I like the way the kit turned out. The finished model fits very nicely into my Skyhawk collection and I still love that scheme! Thanks to Dragon for supplying the review kit, even though they're not the supplier any longer. Now, on to building the other 3 anniversary jets I have decals for…