Ultracast

1/32 RAF Fighter Pilot from the Battle of Britain 1940

Kit Number: 54009

Reviewed by  Al Lafleche, IPMS# 30337

MSRP: $17.95 Website: www.ultracast.com The single figure, sculpted by Mike Good, is molded in a good quality creamy white resin and consists of just eight parts: head, scarf, right arm holding flight gloves, left arm with the hand in his trouser pocket, upper torso wearing a life vest, lower torso, left and right lower legs in flight boots. There is no base. He is posed in a heroic stance with windblown hair and scarf. It comes packaged in a zip lock bag attached to a card stock header. This offers adequate protection for this kit. The package art, a single front view photo of the assembled and painted model, suffices as painting instruction. There are no assembly instructions, but everything is self explanatory. Pour plugs on several parts seemed rather large at first glance, but the actual attachment points are very thin and easily cleaned. Cutting away the torso pour plugs with a razor saw left a shadow which had to be addressed with a #11 blade. Once this was done, fit was perfect. It's a bit tricky removing the plug from the right hand, since the gloves have some delicate sculpting in the fingers. There was a bit of a seam at the back of the neck on the head. Total clean up before test fitting was about 5 minutes.

Assembly was smooth and just about perfect using Zap-A-Gap Green and Zip Kicker. All parts were keyed and fit perfectly, including the lower legs. The only problem was that the key plug at the left shoulder was too big for the keyway in the left arm. Actually, the keyway was probably the bad part. Fit at this joint needed a touch of Zap to fill the slight seam. I drilled a hole in one boot and the head to allow a holding rod. Assembly time was maybe ten minutes from first drop of glue to primer. These times are quite typical for a simple kit.

I painted the figure with Vallejo acrylics, except for the lips which are from Citadel (tanned flesh). The RAF uniform is described as dark blue gray, so I mixed intense blue with black gray for the base color and added deep sky blue to this for the highlights. The shadows are black. The boots are black gray with black shadows and black gray mixed with beige red for highlights. The life vest is flat yellow with old orange added for shadows and deep yellow for highlights. I chose a lighter palette than I usually use for the skin tones to give the feeling of a younger man. Painting took me a couple hours, but your mileage may vary depending on your natural speed and the types of paint you use. Thanks to Kevin McLaughlin from Ultracast for the sample.