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AIRFIX and ITALERI 1:72 F-84F THUNDERSTREAK Comparison Review |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne
(kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
26 December 2005
Date: December 20th, 2005
Do you really need another potted history of the Thunderstreak? There are already enough reviews on SMAKR of this aircraft all excellent summaries. Better still, I recommend Joe Baugher's F-84 page - all you ever wanted to know about the F-84 series but were too lazy to go and find out for yourself! One new fact to me is that not all of the 2,711 Thunderstreaks were built by Republic - 599 of these were built by General Motors. Had this been a US Navy aircraft I would have known, but the US Air force never got involved with that nonsense of assigning different basic designations depending on which firm actually built each aircraft.
I started off on this project without realising that each of these kits had already been reviewed twice on SMAKR, with one reviewer (Peter Knight) having reviewed both kits, albeit in separate reviews. The other Airfix review is by Richard Stracey, and the other Italeri review is by Mark Braithy himself. Not much has been left uncovered between these four reviews. The upshot of this is that I intend (for once!) to write quite a short review, and I will describe building the kits 'side by side', rather than separately as I usually do in a comparative review.
I still need to summarise briefly the kits. Both date from the 1970's, although the Airfix kit seems to have aged better - maybe it was a better quality mold to begin with. Both have raised panel line detail - delicate in the case of the Airfix kit, much more pronounced in the case of the Italeri kit. Both kits are reasonably priced: if I were to buy them today, they would set me back around 10 Euro. The Italeri kit is one that I bought in 1999, but nothing has changed since then as far as I know - in fact, the boxing has probably been the same since the late 1980's. Predictably, the contents were not bagged. The subject options are a natural metal USAF machine, and a camouflaged Luftwaffe example. The availability of the Italeri kit is somewhat sporadic; however, as I write this review, it is readily available. The Airfix kit is also the current boxing with the Diavoli Rossi markings, as well as decals for a Greek F-84F. The kit contents are properly bagged, which is something that Airfix generally does if the box is one piece. I bought the Airfix kit early in 2005. I must have got the last one available from Hannants, because the kit disappeared completely from the online catalogue once I ordered it - I ordered two but got only one. Given the way in which Airfix operates, I would guess that the kit might be out of production for some years. This seems somewhat strange, as Italeri has the market to itself - unless you can pick up the Airfix kit second hand, or from some old stock.
I had originally intended to build just these two kits, but as I was building the Italeri kit I decided it would be a good idea to add the Italeri RF-84 Thunderflash kit to the review. This kit has about 50% commonality with the Thunderstreak kit, and is currently available. However, I eventually decided to stick with the original plan, which means I will review the Thunderflash separately, although there will be some cross-referencing between the two articles.
I had never built the Italeri kit before, but I had built the Airfix kit about 20 years ago as a Luftwaffe subject, which was one of the options then offered in the kit. For some reason, I was hell-bent on completing this aircraft as a similar subject. This meant swiping the German decals from the Italeri kit. Also, as I wanted to build a Diavoli Rossi subject, that in turn meant using the Airfix decals with the Italeri kit. I am not sure why I did this. I wanted to fit bombs to the outer pylons, and only the Airfix kit has these, but I could just as easily have fitted the Airfix bombs to the Italeri kit.
We start in the cockpit, where the Airfix kit has a clear advantage. The Italeri cockpit is non-existent, save for a very rudimentary seat (with an even more rudimentary headrest), and a blank main instrument panel. The Airfix kit has a 9-part cockpit sub-assembly, not including the pilot figure which I did not use. The two-part intake divider/enclosed nose wheel bay attaches on to the front bulkhead. The Airfix kit also includes a three-part tail pipe assembly, which the Italeri kit is completely lacking. I did not bother trying to enhance for the Italeri cockpit: it would have taken an awful lot of work, and at that point in time I had a low opinion of the Italeri kit. I did have to blank off a section of the Italeri fuselage towards the rear, so that you couldn't see right through the fuselage from front to back.
The choice of interior paint colours was the next stumbling block. The Airfix instructions refer to Humbrol paint codes and nothing else. However, the cockpit colour of Hu 140 maps to FS 36231 Dark Gull Grey, which was indeed used as cockpit interior colour for US military aircraft at the time. According to the Italeri instructions, the cockpit colour should be chromate. The Italeri instructions include ModelMaster paint codes, but only some of them have FS mappings. No FS code is included for this colour, but I assume it is Yellow Chromate Primer from the German (Olivegelb) and Italian (Verde-Giallo) colour descriptions. The new construction guide for the Italeri Thunderflash - but not the old guide - is different again, giving a cockpit colour of black. Another possible choice is Interior Green. It doesn't feature in any in any of these kits, although it does seem to be more popular for slightly older aircraft, based on colour information for kits of the F-80, T-33, F-94B and F-84G Thunderjet. My guess is that there was a lack of uniformity around this period until FS 36231 eventually became the 'standard' colour, and this is what I used for both kits.
The cover from the old (probably first) boxing of the Airfix kit. The outer pylon on the Thunderstreak slopes down, but on this artwork the starboard outer pylon is depicted as sloping up instead of down!
The Italeri kit has a separate nose section, because of the commonality with the Thunderflash kit. Like the Airfix kit, it has a two-part intake divider with an enclosed nose wheel bay, but unlike the Airfix kit it lacks the pitot tube on the front of the divider. I was building the Airfix kit with the undercarriage down, and I made sure to add sufficient nose ballast. There wasn't enough room in the upper section of the divider above the wheel bay, so I put in some more beneath the cockpit. A final observation on the forward fuselage area is that the windows behind the cockpit are extremely thick in both kits. I would have used Humbrol ClearFix here instead of the provided parts, were it not for the curvature of the fuselage spine. The Italeri kit does include the option for an open canopy, but the lack of interior detail somewhat negates this feature.
I did not open the airbrakes on either kit, even though both kits have the option. Both kits have raised detail on the brakes to represent perforations, and good detail in the airbrake bays. Only the Airfix kit includes the hydraulic jack struts. In both cases, the airbrakes were not a perfect fit to the fuselage, and this was one of the areas that required some filler. Mention of filler takes me neatly on to the wings. Both kits use conventional design for the main wings: upper and lower sections for each wing, with the leading surfaces, trailing surfaces and wing tip molded into the upper section only. I needed to use filler not only on the wings themselves, but also on the wing root joints. The Airfix kit is somewhat better in this respect, but with both kits you need to take care in getting the wings to set with the correct amount of droop. The wing droop (or anhedral) of the swept-wing Thunderstreak was quite pronounced, more than the wing dihedral of the straight-winged Thunderjet from which the Thunderstreak was developed. The tail planes were set flat on the Thunderstreak, so this area was not a problem.
As I was building the Italeri kit with retracted undercarriage, I could not properly compare the two kits in how they reproduced the lowered undercarriage. However, the Italeri Thunderflash kit has practically the same undercarriage as the Thunderstreak kit, and I did build the Thunderflash with wheel down. From this experience, I would say that the Airfix and Italeri kits are very similar, and both are good. Both kits have the main strut legs designed to attach to the wing at a precise angle, which is designed to accommodate the wing droop. In fact, for this reason it is a good idea to attach the main legs before you attach the wings to the fuselage, as it clearly indicates the amount of droop you need. I did this with the Airfix kit, but I obviously couldn't do it with the Italeri kit - I just used the Airfix kit as a guide. I have two criticisms of the Airfix undercarriage. The first is that some of the wing bay door parts are far too thick, and I really ought to have thinned them down. The second is that the wheels are poorly molded. I rooted around in one of my spares bags for the wheels from the kit I built 20 years ago - obviously, I built that 'wheels up'. Amazingly, in a huge heap of small parts, I found both wheels in about 30 seconds. They were better than the current moldings, although still not perfect.
The main problem with the Italeri kit in this area is that the main undercarriage doors are too small. You won't notice this with the undercarriage down, but you certainly will when it is retracted. I had to attach the doors to the lower wings along just a couple of edges, and fill in the gaps. It is because of potential problems such as this that I always attached closed wing undercarriage doors before assembling wing halves - things are easier to fix this way.
The Revell kit, which is presumably a reboxing of the Italeri kit, although I have only the Italeri-Revell association to go on.
I did not attach any tanks or even pylons to the Italeri kit, as this was to represent the Diavoli Rossi aircraft. I left the decision until the last possible minute, until I had the kit mostly painted in fact. In the end, I decided an aerobatics aircraft is best shown in a 'clean' configuration, which was why I was building it with retracted undercarriage in the first place. I could be wrong, but I doubt very much that the aircraft had drop tanks fitted during actual displays, unless the manoeuvres were very sedate. Even when fitted with the all-moving tail plane, the F-84F was not the most agile aircraft - and that is an understatement. I suspect that tanks were only used on ferry flights by the aerobatics team.
Like the Italeri kit, the Airfix kit includes both styles of drop tanks - larged finned tanks for the inner pylons, and thinner 'clean' tanks for the outer pylons. As mentioned earlier, only the Airfix kit includes bombs - a pair of Mk. 117 750-pound bombs to be exact. The Airfix problem of parts thickness shows up again here, as the bomb fins and outer pylons are obviously too thick. I should have at least thinned the fins, but again I did not for some reason.
I will deal with the Italeri paint and decals first - as applied to the Airfix kit - as they are much easier to describe. According to Italeri, the upper camouflage of the Luftwaffe aircraft is FS 34092 European Green and FS 36231 Dark Gull Grey, and the undersides were painted FS 36375 Light Ghost Grey. As with all Italeri paint guides, this one needs to be checked out first. For the upper camouflage, the green is too dark and the grey is too light. The correct colours are RAL 6014 Olivegrun (FS 34087, or Hu 155) and RAL 7012 Basaltgrau (FS 36152, or Hu 27). For the underside, I used Hu 64 light grey, which matches RAL 7001 Silbergrau, and FS 36375 for that matter. Re-reading Mark Braithy's review afterwards, I noted that he came to similar conclusions. Mark used Hu 127 instead of Hu 64, but apparently either Humbrol paint could be a match for RAL 7001. My aircraft has a matt finish based on the paints used. There is a possibility that the finish could have been semi-gloss (aka satin), but I will not pursue this matter any further here.
I painted the drop tanks yellow (Hu 24). The old Airfix instructions mentioned a colour of 'deep cream' for the Luftwaffe tanks, even though the picture of the completed model on the box cover seems to show a brighter shade closer to 'standard' yellow. Then again, the camouflage green on that model is well wide of the mark. I began to wonder if any Thunderstreaks ever carried tanks painted yellow. Among the many F-84 photographs on airliners.net, I eventually found one that did show German F-84F's with said items. Because of the poor quality colour reproduction in the photograph, I would still put a question mark over the correct shade of yellow.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
As usual, the Zanchetti-produced decals were generally excellent, although the decal placement guide on the back of the box was some way short of being comprehensive. The decals were coated with Humbrol MattCote for a uniform matt finish.
The basic paint scheme for the Diavoli Rossi subject is straightforward: natural metal all over, with a red spine and Italian tricolour lower wings and tail planes. I used Hu 11 silver for the natural metal (as opposed to a duller colour), on the basis that aerobatics team aircraft would be kept nice and clean and shiny. The instructions suggest Hu 2 Emerald Green and Hu 19 red for the Italian green and red under the wings. I was very pleased with the results, as the finished scheme really does look like the Italian flag.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Back up top is where the problems were. The decal sheet looks very good, with seemingly very good register. The decals are a bit thick, but easy to apply. I was even able to cut away some of the carrier film on the large wing decoration decals, without any fear that the decals would fall apart. However, once I had finished I took a long, hard look at the kit and decided I could not ignore what I had suspected all along: the red decoration decals are too light in colour. The disparity between Hu 2 red and the decal red is clear to see from this photograph:
One could argue that it is the paint that is the problem, but for me it had to be the decals - they just had a 'washed out' look. I had to painstakingly overpaint all of the decoration decals. I then had to deal with another problem, one which I only saw when I applied the wing decals. The problem? There was no white on the wing roundels - the middle section was completely clear! This can also be seen in the above photograph. After some head scratching, I decided to apply proper Italian roundels over the faulty ones. The only suitable spares I could actually came from the Italeri Thunderflash kit, and even they were slightly bigger than the Airfix decals. This in turn meant I had to paint over part of the 'decorations' to create the gap that should exist between the decorations and the roundels. Also, it was only when I applied the decals that I noticed problems with the register of the decoration decals, with unsightly white edges in places. These had to be painted over.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The expanses of red paint made it very difficult to take a good photograph of the completed kit. Note the black panel on the spine, which was not quite obscured by the red.
Richard Stracey also built the Diavoli Rossi subject, but he did not report having the colour washout and roundel problems that I had. Looking at a photograph in his review, it does seem that the decals are the correct shade of red. Perhaps his decals came from a different production batch than mine. What we both agree on is that the blue in the Greek roundels is too dark, a problem which is not confined to just this Airfix kit.
Some of the fuselage decals (just above the wing) on both sheets would not 'map' to the appropriate panel lines on either kit, and even cutting them up into smaller parts wasn't enough to fix the problem. I don't think this was related to my switching of the decal sheets, as I would have the same problems with the Thunderflash kit.
In terms of detail, these two kits are very similar, apart from the areas already mentioned. As for accuracy, there are a few interesting points. Both kits have the all-moving tail plane, which was introduced in the -25 production block. Consulting Joe Baughers's serial lists, the USAF subject in the Italeri kit is a block-50 aircraft - no problems there. The other three subjects are all European operators, and the BuAer numbers are not available. Still, since the Europeans did not start to operate the Thunderstreak until 1955 at the earliest, I think it's safe to assume that all three subjects would be at least block-25.
The underfuselage fairing - which housed a brake parachute - was introduced very late in the production run, but was retrofitted to many earlier aircraft. Both kits have this feature. Judging from the photographs at airliners.net, I would guess that most if not all European Thunderstreaks had this fitted. All sources state that the F-84F was fitted with six .5-inch machine guns - four in the upper nose and one in each wing root. Neither kit has any sign of the wing root guns, and I suspect that later aircraft were either built without these guns, or had them retrospectively removed.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
My initial presumption was that the Airfix kit was markedly superior. Having now built both kits, I am happy to say that I underestimated the Italeri kit. I still think the Airfix kit is better overall, but the gap between the two kits is a lot smaller than I had previously thought. Still, we could do with a new tooling of the Thunderstreak. It should be an attractive proposition for kit manufacturers, given the types large-scale use by both the USA and a number of Western European air forces. If both Academy and Tamiya could see merit in producing a new tooling of the Thunderjet, then surely the Thunderstreak deserves the same treatment!
As mentioned at the top of the review, Joe Baugher's F-84 page is indispensable. Joe's home page is a veritable goldmine for any looking for detailed histories of US military aircraft. The best online source of pictures is - of course - airliners.net, providing a good supply of images for the F-84 family. There is one photograph of a mounted F-84F in the colours of the Italian Getti Tonanti display team - see if you can find it, and spot the deliberate mistake without reading the accompanying text! There are no photographs of the Diavoli Rossi however, and it is very hard to find any substantial information on the operations of this team.
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