First off, every major door on this machine was molded to be in the open position. I wanted a realistic look to the model which meant that some doors would have to be closed - this could be dangerous since, when it comes to models, separately molded doors rarely fit in the closed position; more on this later. I decided on displaying my Lightning II in the take-off configuration: landing gear extended, auxiliary lift fan engaged (with its accompanying doors open), engine exhaust at about a 45 degree angle, flaps/slats down, weapons bay and canopy closed with pilot (un)comfortably seated in the cockpit.
The first step in the build I took was to assemble the pieces that didn't need paint; this meant the inserts of the elevons and vertical stabs, etc. and to close the weapons bay. I like the idea of the smaller inserts for the stabilizers and such, but I didn't like the execution. The seams have a bit of a gap to fill, which may cause me to lose some of the raised surface detail, and they were in odd places. I don't understand why Kitty Hawk couldn't seam them along existing panel lines such as the rudder connection points. (Click on the images to see what I mean.)
I was concerned that the doors I wanted closed would not fit very well, but much to my surprise, they nearly snapped into place. This goes for the forward main gear doors as well (which after much photographic research I have concluded are only
opened during extension/retraction). Even though the weapons bay wouldn't be visible, I glued the two bay tubs inside the lower fuselage piece to improve the sturdiness of the part. It should be noted that part of the reason I decided not to display the well-detailed bays was because Kitty Hawk did not provide the launch rail/mechanism or any air-to-ground weapons munitions for the bays, exposing some garishly long pegs in the bay itself. One could kit-bash or get some aftermarket parts for this, as I have seen, but I wanted to keep this as much of an out-of-the-box build as possible, with a few exceptions I will discuss later.
Another thing that needs addressing with this kit is the main wing join. Kitty Hawk engineered the contact point with female pegs on the lower fuselage piece and female pegs on the upper wing halves. When test fitting this, it seemed that it would kind of work, but the seam on the underside of the wings had a slight step and I just didn't trust that the contact points provided enough surface area for the glue to make a strong weld. My solution was to first trim down by a slight amount the pegs on the lower fuselage part so that the step disappeared, and second cut small, short strips of Evergreen styrene and attach them to the fuselage and wings in an alternating pattern so that they would interlock together when attached. If nothing else, this eased my anxiety over the strength of the weld because the wing pieces held really well when I dry-fitted them.
Speaking of dry-fitting, once the glue had dried, I dry fitted all the major pieces together, and the overall fit appears to be really good. I don't see any major gaps and the wing seems can be blended easily. One criticism of the surface detail is that Kitty Hawk has engraved riveting on the skin of the aircraft. Since the skin of the F-35 is not made of metal, there is no riveting on the skin of the actual plane. I haven't quite decided on what to do about this yet, but I will have time before I have to address this anyway.
Overall, first impressions of the kit are good. Good engineering, good to great fit in most places and surface detail (aside from the riveting and a few raised panel lines that don't exist on the real thing) seems good. I will continue the review as I go along.
Cheers
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