PJ Production

1/72 RAF Pilots seated in a/c (90's)

Stock Number: 721118

Reviewed By  Jack Wade, IPMS# 45604

MSRP: Euros €4.20 (Approx. $6.50 US) Website: www.pjproduction.net New from this manufacturer of fine quality resin parts, are sets of seated pilot figures in 1/72. Having already been a satisfied customer with some of their figures and a conversion set under my belt, my expectations were high for these samples. They were surely met in terms of both detail and fit. Yes, I said fit; a feature often ignored in the design of 1/72 crew figures. Of course this is a well known fact for the small minority of us who like to ‘detail’ their cockpits with well sculpted crew figures. To me this is a sensible solution for dressing up a bad or just too plain looking kit seat. Of course I also belong to an equally obscure bunch that likes to do in-flight builds on a stand and a good figure is a must for this. The parts are all nicely and crisply detailed - the best I have seen in this scale. These are not generic crew figures either; the various details are all accurate for a particular era and nationality. The raw parts have some wispy flash left over from the casting process, but the parts are very easily and quickly cleaned up. I simply ‘pecked’ off the flash with a sharp blade as it is fine and brittle enough to break off cleanly. You don’t have to carve away at it as with injected molded flash. As I said, the figures are nicely proportioned. They fit most of the seats with which I tested them including a Tamiya P-51 and a Trumpeter Lightning (one of these guys will improve the office tremendously with the latter example). The back and seat of the figures are mostly flattened out making for a nice mating surface with the kit seat. Another nice design feature is that the shoulder harnesses are molded high on the shoulders so as to appear to actually be holding the little guy in instead of just draped hopelessly over his shoulder. This is something I have never seen from any other manufacturer and it looks very nice to my eye. This set of two RAF Pilots is well cast and posed. All four arms are separate items on this set. One pair is suitable for posing in-flight with hands on stick and throttle and the other pair is meant to be posed raised with hands on the instrument panel coaming. You can mix and match the arms with either of the figures to suit your imagination. The raised arms would be suitable for either a pre-flight scene (in the arming area, for example, where the pilot is to have his hands and arms out of the cockpit area while the ordnance is armed) or this pose would work well for a navigator with the other figure representing the more occupied pilot. The only difference between the two figures themselves is that one has his head turned to the side. This guy is molded very similarly to his 1/48 scale cousin from this manufacturer. The detail is actually very true to the larger scale figure except being a bit simplified as you would expect for the smaller scale rendition. I painted these figures in various shades of green for European operations. In hindsight, it may have been better for the purposes of this review to have painted them in desert gear with contrasting tans, greens and grey gloves, but I do have a project in mind for one of these guys (an RAFG* Lightning from the mid-70's) so I painted them in shades of green. Indeed I think these figures are really suitable for representing crews from the 70's on despite the 90's designation on the package. To me, the differences between 70's, 80's and 90's RAF gear are really rather subtle and almost imperceptible in this scale. I did not wash the parts before spraying them with Gunze Dark Green. I brush painted the remaining colors and there were no problems with adhesion. Again, the detail is well pronounced and accepts a wash and dry-brushing nicely. I used white decal strips from the spares box to depict the reflective tape on the helmets. Again, these were photographed with arms temporarily tacked in place as positioning in the model will likely require some last minute tweaking while the glue is still setting. There will also be some final touching up with color and flat finish when I finally place the figures in a model. Concluding Remarks These sets are top drawer products. They will add a lot to a cockpit with less expense involved than with your typical cockpit detail set. They add a bit of life and action to a display that you will not get with a cockpit detail set. It’s a different sort of animal really to be making such a comparison, but I like using figures from this manufacturer to take the cockpit finish to another level in a different sort of way. You get two figures which means you can dress up two single seat projects cutting the expense of dressing up the office in half again. As I said, I think these figures are a great alternative to a cockpit detail set. Many thanks to IPMS USA for sending the samples for review. A very whole hearted thanks to PJ Production. Not just for supplying the samples, but for producing a great line of products that are largely overlooked by other manufacturers - both large and small scale operations. As you must know after reading this far, I am a big fan of PJ Production’s product line and will not hesitate to recommend this brand to anyone. * RAFG: Royal Air Force Germany