Minicraft

1/144 Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS

Kit Number: 14526

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $39.99 Website: www.minicraftmodels.com The Aircraft The US Air Force has had a long and fairly productive relationship with the 707 series of aircraft. Although the KC-135 is not really a 707, you can fool most of the people most of the time about that. And when it became evident that the -135 was losing ground to new technologies, some Air Guard maintenance people saw the recently retired 707-320's JT-3D engines as fitting (literally) replacements for the underperforming J-57s. Of course the Air Force has to call the engines TF-33s, but there were KC-135Bs where you could still see the "American" logo on the sides of the cowlings. With the later upgrade to CFM-56 high-bypass turbofans, the KC-135R airframe is probably going to outlast the pilots who first flew -135s back in the 50s. My personal opinion on the CFM engines is that although they are quiet and powerful, they look like four beer barrels hung under 2 X 4s. So when it came time to produce an airborne early warning aircraft, the Air Force turned to the tried and true 707-320. With the addition of that huge radome, scopes, communications gear and computers, the AWACS was born. The Navy, not to be outdone, based their E-6 Mercury (TACAMO), on the 320 series, as well as the Army's E-8 J-STARS. Saudi Arabia, the Royal Air Force, France and NATO have purchased E-3s, and equipped them with the CFM-56 engines. An interesting sidelight is that Luxemburg's entire Air Force, which is based at Geilenkirchen Germany, consists of the seventeen NATO AWACS. The Kit The parts are all packed in plastic bags, with the sprues separated by subassembly. The wings are in one bag, the engines in another, radome and other AWACS specific parts in a third, engines get their own bag, and landing gear and stabilizers are together. I can see that this makes the kit very modular, for when they come out with the E-8, which is announced but not arrived, a NATO AWACS (not sure which engines) and probably an E-6 TACAMO. The box top promises "New Tooling". Well, yes. And no. The dome antenna and ancillary parts are definitely new, fresh and pretty good. The fuselage is reworked, but not new. You can see where the mounting holes are to be opened for the E-6 and E-8 kits. The wing is not original with this kit, it appears to be the same mold as used in their previous 707-320. Not bad, just not as new as I expected. Everything is flash-free, and all the parts are true, no warp. On to the workbench. Assembly and Painting There's no interior for the fuselage. The clear part is there to do a clear windshield, but since you have to put ¾ ounce (23 grams) of weight in there, there's not much reason, or room to do an interior. That's about 5 US Nickels in weight and volume. Also, the decal sheet includes the black for the windshield. That's the way this one is done. I'm sure someone is just dying to do a complete interior, then close up the fuselage, hiding it all. Someone with advanced AMS. Not me. The fuselage halves meet quite nicely. There's a seam on the fuselage halves that will require a good bit of work. Also, there are fit issues between the fuselage halves and the cockpit clear part. If you have Acryl Blue body putty, I'd suggest that, as it shrinks less than most, and the light blue color allows the gray paint to cover better than red or green would. The wings may not be brand new, but the method for connecting them across the fuselage is good engineering. Once the glue sets, they're solid, and that's a real plus when you're trying to support a long wing. The engines require skill and workmanship. The nacelles aren't quite round. Assembling them with a cylinder which fits tightly inside both ends helps, but they're still just the slightest bit oval. The seam inside the intake can be fixed. Here's Steve Keck's solution… He assembles the engine completely. Since the interior is aluminum, he then uses Testors® Silver, the thick kind in the little square bottle, liberally applied to the entire inside of the nacelle. While the paint is still fresh, blow gently on the surface. The pigment will float to the top, and as it dries it produces a clean surface, with the seam now unseen. Sometimes the simple solution is the best! Another conundrum which faces KC-135E builders is that there are different pylons for some of the nacelles. The E-3 has solved this problem. The pylons with the longer extensions at the front contain engine-driven electrical generators. Since the E-3 needs about a megawatt of power to run the radar, scopes, radios, computers, and coffee maker, all 4 engines have the long pylons. Minicraft, to their credit, got this correct. There are some E-3s with large "bumps" on the back of the pylons. The aircraft depicted in the decals doesn't have them. Another good one for Minicraft. Once the main subassemblies are complete, wings on, radome support and horizontal stabs on, clear part in place at the front, and liberal putty applied, it's time to paint. The leading edges of the wing and horizontal stabs were done in Alclad®, and then masked with Parafilm. The interior of the wheel wells is white, not aluminum as the instructions say, and after painting white, they were masked. The whole aircraft is then painted Light Gray, 36495. The instructions call for 16473 gray, but it's too greenish. The "canoes" on the forward fuselage are painted a darker gray. A coat of Future was added, and another after decals. The pylons and engines, landing gear doors and fiddly bits were painted and added after decals. I can't begin to count the number of times I've broken parts off while trying to convince a decal it belongs right there. Decals The decals are good quality, they go on nicely, and they don't crack, break, peel, tear, or dissolve while they're being installed. But there are a couple of unfortunate miscues in the design of the decal sheet. The first and most obvious is the American flags for the tail. The blue field for flags on both the right and left side should be toward the nose of the aircraft. This means there's a left and right handed flag. Both on the sheet are good, but identical. It's incorrect on the boxart too. The unit markings are correct, as well as the aircraft numbers. See photo on Airliners.net. The red stripes on the engine nacelles are really too wide. The spacing is correct, but these stripes would be about a scale foot. I'm not sure if there's a problem printing lines that would be fine enough, but it should be possible. The other decal problem is the windscreens. Multiple, as there is a left and right side. The decal doesn't allow for the contour of the clear part, causing the rear windows to be too high, which would result in something closer to a skylight than a window. Cutting the decal apart results in window frames that are not parallel. Watch the positioning of the personnel door decals. I don't think the scribing exactly matches photos for the positions. That may be more an opinion than a fact, though. But there's more good stuff. Those long black lines on the top of the wings weren't much of a pain to get in place. Long thin decals are often a horror for me, and these were quite OK. Same with that large decal on top of the radome. Finishing Once the decals were on and sealed, the finishing touches and small parts were applied. The landing gear goes together easily, and is a nice little set of models by themselves. A nice touch was the two sets of gear doors for either up or down gear. The large doors in the fuselage for the main gear are closed except when the gear is going up or down. The instructions appear to call for them to be open when the gear is down. No, see the photos. There should also be a panel line across these doors, as they're hinged and fold as they open and close, if you're into that. As for the engines and pylons, they have fit problems too. Be prepared to use filler and touch-up the paint both top and bottom of the pylons. The instructions warn not to put the air probe at the top of the tail on until later, as it's in the way, and fragile. Good call. Antennas need to be added to the top and bottom of the fuselage and at the wingtips. The wingtip antennas are shown on the boxart, but aren't there. The right one only had to be reinstalled twice. There are 6 or 7 antennas on the top of the fuselage. I think 3 of the "rooftop" antennas are for satellite communications and datalink. There are also 6 UHF/VHF comm. antennas on the bottom of the fuselage. None of these antennas are shown or mentioned. Conclusions and Opinions Recommended. This is a decent basic kit, which anyone with modeling skills can complete. Fit is fair to good, and the engineering of the wing connection is commendable. The "need" for corrections and additions depends on your AMS level. In this case, I felt the need for antennas, a self-printed corrected flag on the tail, and corrected turbine warning stripes. The box lists the skill level as 2, which means it requires glue and paint, but doesn't have resin, PE or other add-ons. Too true. Maybe someone will come out with a set of PE antennas? The assembly instructions are good, except for the gear doors. The decal mistakes are definitely a problem for the less-experienced modeler.