Hasegawa 1/72 Grumman OV-1B Mohawk

HASEGAWA 1:72 GRUMMAN OV-1B MOHAWK

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: 3 July 2008

Kit Details:

Hasegawa JS:025:200 - 1/72 Authentic scale - OV-1B Mohawk Attack Plane

Aircraft History:

What began as traditional photographic and visual observation aircraft of the post-war era that saw the development of the OV-1 Mohawk, is today huge Boeing 707's packed with sophisticated electronic and radar equipment. The Mohawk effectively pioneered the electronic SLAR (side looking airborne radar) era with its large underfuselage pod slung slightly to the starboard side and then later ELINT pods under its wings.

The Mohawk began life as the Grumman G-134 and was a different project to many others as it was predominantly meeting a joint Army/Marine Corps specification (as opposed to the Air Force) for a battlefield management type. It was initially designated YOV-1A after its maiden flight in early 1959 and the USMC was also very interested in securing the aircraft and it would be designated OF-1 in service. For a variety of reasons the USMC pulled out before the prototype was built and left only the development of the OV-1A for the Army. Interestingly enough the aircraft hat a T tail in wooden mock up form before trials revealed stability problems and this lead to a change to the triple fin arrangement we associate with the Mohawk today.

The OV-1A was fitted out with a comprehensive array of avionics to enable it to meet an all-weather battlefield surveillance requirement and was also capable of carrying up to 2,700-lb of ordnance under the wings. The OV-1A was fitted with high resolution camera systems at the wing roots and Grumman built 64 of these for the US Army. The type proved quite successful, and its bulbous canopy and short nose provided tremendous visual reconnaissance possibilities for the 2 crew members.

As usual, it was soon identified that a number of improvements could be made to the design and from this was borne the OV-1B of which 101 were built by Grumman which was only numerically smaller than the upgraded OV-1A to OV-1C standard of which 133 were built. The OV-1B variant differed in external features most notably by the underslung SLAR pod underneath the fuselage, although its wing span was also increased by another 6 feet. Interestingly another small change not often noted is that the small triangle windows in the roof of the windscreen were filled in. On later models, particularly the OV-1D, these upper windows were on some examples and filled in on others so reference checking is recommended.

In its specialised tactical reconnaissance role the Mohawk would be considered as a successful type, however, as development of better avionics and the ability to install these in ever faster and/or flying higher aircraft the Mohawk never really truly reached a status of high functionality in spite of being an ungainly yet reliable and successful type. It saw operational service in Vietnam and undertook many roles in battlefield management, particularly for the Army back in the US deserts and eventually the OV-1B was out of service by the early 1980's with only a handful of upgraded OV/RV-1Ds still in service for a few more years.

The Kit:

This kit originates from the OV1A/C Mohawk that Hasegawa produced back in the late 60's which I believe was one of their first 20 kits produced, so this will give you some idea what to expect in the box. As I understand it a few years later they revised the tooling to model the OV-1B and as such never released the A/C variants again (as there are some slight differences between the two molds). I was surprised to see how "green" the profile on the boxart was as most (probably all) of these machines came in a light olive drab.

This kit I picked up itself is one out of the dusty closet nabbed off ebay but in very reasonable condition. The four sprues were contained in a plastic bag along with the clear parts on their own sprue. The injection molded plastic is white in colour and total parts count is 45 plus 3 transparencies for the cockpit. The parts were hard and brittle which typify the era's tooling technology although only the pilot figures really had any flash to speak of - although many parts when inspected closely do need a bit of a quick run over with the hobby knife. Panel lines are raised and overall the detail is fairly minimal, the propellors for instance looking a bit clunky for my liking. The clear parts were quite thin but rather foggy and the sprue lugs on this old boxing were extremely thick. I've seen the "current day" boxings of this kit and only the colour of the plastic (to a light grey) and decal sheet will be different, the moldings are still very much from 4 decades ago.

Instructions:

This comes in the form of a small fold out photocopied sheet, a bit smaller in page length than what you would associate with Hasegawa nowadays, but no doubt the current day boxings of this kit will contain current instruction sheets. After a very brief introduction followed by a sprue map, there are 8 very simplistic assembly steps - mind you it is a simplistic kit. These are a bit vague in areas but most modellers should have no trouble following it. For example, it only tells you to put in one pilot figure (when there are two - but a hard to see second arrow does indicate two) and gear door assembly is only provided for one side, so you will have to work out the parts for the other (which is not hard). A two-view diagram (top view and port side) is provided for the decal/colour markings, but a scrap view of the underside of the main wings is also provided to assist. All painting information is generic names and only a small list is provided underneath the external markings for some detail painting - eg: the cockpit is not covered at all. The whole instruction sheet is in English.

Obviously current day boxings of this kit will have the superb Hasegawa instructions covering everything, so the above really applies if you were to pick up the old version as I did.

Construction:

Even though the cockpit is not covered in the instructions until step 6 (of 8!) I decided to concentrate on this area first, because obviously by the time I got to step 6 I wanted the sub assembly almost ready to install. This really is utterly basic, nothing more than generic non-descript seats on a floor and a dashboard shaped piece of plastic for the instrument panel. Partly because I do build wheels-up models but also because it was so poorly covered, I also painted up the two pilot figures to try and least hide some of the "featureless" parts of the cockpit. There is a blank console between the two crew members so I painted this up and used bits of tiny stretched sprue to at least give it some resemblance of a cockpit interior. The other thing I noticed quickly was just how thick the sprue lugs were - it was very hard to tell the difference between sprue and alignment tabs - most parts have left over sprue on the part itself (as opposed to its edge) which obviously needed a bit of care to carve off. In the absence of any information in the instructions as well as a lack of reference sources, I painted the cockpit Interior Green and hoped for the best!

The instructions start with assembly of the landing gear of which only one gear is shown as it tells you to repeat the step for parts 24&25. There's also the strut (part 26) to be mindful of including as well. The instructions don't tell you which landing gear goes onto which side, so you will have to remember the wheel faces the outside of the plane! Later in the instructions when it provides landing gear door assembly, keep your wits about you to make sure you put the correct wheel against the right mix of gear doors!

The pod, propeller/engine and underwing tanks are sub assembled next. All fitted quite well providing a bit of care was taken bearing in mind the age of the kit. The engine assembly is also very basic, the nacelles are molded in one piece for you, along with the propellor and its spinner, so the only other parts was the shaft and the cap at the end. The instructions don't tell you but obviously don't cement the shaft to the nacelle if you want a moveable propeller. Also positioning the stopper on the end is critical for a flush propeller assembly.

The cockpit was carefully lined up and installed into the fuselage halves which were then closed afterward. My halves had warped over time, so needed a lot of care and strategic clamping to adhere together. I inserted the pilot figures at this point to ensure they didn't get in the way of other parts - weirdly both figures are identical in having their left arm out as if gripping a control stick - so that looked odd in the cockpit.

While the fuselage halves were drying I added the three tail fins onto the tailplane. After studying the instructions and test fitting the outer fins clearly these are supposed to go on at a 90 degree angle to the fuselage (ie: straight up and down). However, just double checking references as I do, I noticed that the outer fins are actually 90 degrees to the upward tailplane (ie: sloped inward at the top toward the fuselage), so keep this in mind and obviously an inaccuracy of the kit. It was no problem to have them slope inwards at the top, but because the kit was not engineered that way, there is a very small gap, easy to plug with super glue underneath. At the same time I sub assembled the underfuselage pod which needed clamping as a result of warping, and also lacked locating pins so were butt joined, and left aside to dry.

All the gear doors were removed from the sprue and the leftover lugs carved off so I could fit them to depict a wheels up model. Test fitting revealed a run along the edges of the doors and a scrape on the inside of the wells with the hobby knife was needed, but once done most of the the doors fitted nicely - only the smaller outer doors on the main wings were a real struggle to fit and needed several trims and filler afterwards. I then used hobby glue from the inside to plug up the gaps.

Returning back to the fuselage the tailfin assembly was added without any dramas other than a very small gap where it meets the spine that needed filling and blending in - the only real trap to be wary of is to make sure you fit it so the main middle tail fin is vertical and not slanted. The nose cone is a reasonable fit but has no locating pins, and the mating surfaces of both nose cone and fuselage front were sanded to aid the adhesion. In spite of thorough test fitting I still needed to sand the join lines so the nose cone blended seamlessly into the fuselage - at the expense of several panel lines. I also added in the canopy which was made up of three parts, and providing you do the test fit and slight trim first, surprisingly a good fit.

What was meant to be a quick project was "behind schedule" and this was to further become so when the main wings were tackled. The wings are upper and lower halves with a separate single-piece wingtip section and of course the engine nacelle/cowling sub assembly. Again, warped parts and absence of locating pins hindered the wing assembly and I noticed there were three pairs of holes on the underwing piece. Consulting the instructions and confirming there was only one pair required to fit the underwing tanks on the outer pair, I filled in the other holes as I presume these are for the OV-1C which carried extra stores in Vietnam. The outer wingtip section is not even shaped to allow smooth integration onto the end of the wings. In spite of several test fits and carving, there was still a gap that only filler could use between the wingtip section and main wing. Filler was also needed for the engine attachment even though the fit here was otherwise okay and a trap for young players here is to test fit the engines first, because it is clear that one is port and one is starboard (the most minor step can be seen at the bottom of the cowling if they are on the wrong side). Again, for me the lack of detail in the instructions nearly caught me out. The wings fit okay to the fuselage but needed a test fit and the mating surfaces sanded - I still couldn't escape the need to apply a small amount of filler at the roots. There are small additional flare dispenser pods to put on the rear upper wing surface at the join to the fuselage and these fit okay after the usual checking first.

All that was left to do was add the fuselage pod (which fitted quite well - although make sure you attach it the correct way around) and a couple of small aerials on top. Overall construction had a few challenges, but all of them were the type of problems associated with older kits, and otherwise construction was straight forward and enjoyable.

Colour Schemes:

This kit had only one example, an overall Olive Drab machine of the US Army, serial 25889 - with no other information provided in the instructions. I have not spotted an OV-1B in any other scheme other than Olive Drab (other variants had white examples or low viz grey) through my references so I had no qualms painting up this machine in Humbrol 155. It was also good to appreciate an overall colour scheme for a change.

Decals:

Very old and very aged, these contained only the basic stuff including USAF roundels, large wing walk decals and a small amount of "beware of jet blast" type of stencils. The instructions are totally inadequate for placement of decals, so a lot of it, including the "rescue" decal will need to be interpreted from the boxart or other reference sources. Unfortunately my decals were totally and utterly unusable, disintegrating completely. I therefore ended up using spares - raiding a whole collection just to get some reasonable replica type decals to use. Naturally, I couldn't get them all.

Accuracy:

Dimension wise the kit is pretty poor, coming well underscale by more than 10mm in both length and span. As the underscale comparing span to length is different by 6 mm it technically makes the kit out of proportion too. While the Hasegawa kit captures the bulbous look of the canopy quite well, you can tell when comparing to photos it is no where near bulbous enough, particularly along the roof. What I presume is a T shaped VHF aerial behind the cockpit and a mast type aerial further back near the tail fin are not quite accurate for the OV-1B, from the reference material I have sourced, only a mast type aerial is visible closer to the cockpit. Then there is the slight but easily correctable inaccuracy with the outer tail fins while the pod is only a simplistic replica of the real thing. The basic shape looks okay but you could pick this kit to bits if you wanted to. I can't help but also have a dig at the boxart and the instructions for referring to this as an attack plane (surely not for something that only carries one or two self defence missiles, bombs or smoke rockets!).

Overall Recommendation:

Hasegawa kits from this era are best tackled if it is a subject, like this one, that you are very keen to get hold of and can't get from anywhere else. Whilst I enjoyed the build experience and the finished product looks rather convincing I could not really recommend this kit to inexperienced builders. A decade ago I would have also canned this kit a bit more because of high prices, but nowadays I find Hasegawa kits are less expensive than Revell and Italeri (currency exchange rate no doubt)! So it is only recommended for those who don't mind tackling older kits, like a few old kit challenges to deal with, are not fussed by some of the inaccuracies and of course need to have a Mohawk in their collection.

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