It's finally here, my gallery/review for the 1/72 VF-11b thunderbolt by hasegawa:
Like allways with hasegawa kits the detail is excelent, but you'll have to take alot of extra time to paint and fix some details.
As you can see clearly on the picture bellow a drop of superglue fell inside the canopy, and I didn´t knew this untill I removed the masking tape from the plastic, wich in my case is allways the last thing I do.
To be honest, for me this model lacks exitement, mainly because of the limited options you will have in personalizing it, I think it should include high visibility and low visibility waterslides, it only has half of the high visibility decals, for example, the "no step" it only comes in black, so by default you can´t paint this plane in a dark colour (like I was planning to do)
Speaking of decals, I found alot of people complaining on the quiality of the ones included with this kit, mainly they complain about decals that don't bend even with alot of setting liquid, but I on the other hand think they are almost as good as the ones that come with the VF-19A, yes they require a little more setting solution, but the details are amazing and they are cut almost on the edge of the print, so youll have very little of "extra decal".
There are some pieces (like the biceps of the arms) that the manual tell's you to paint, but you won't see them at all.
Some clear parts dont fit, you'll need to do alot of sanding if yu want them to fit perfectly
Also, it feels like alot of unecesary extra parts are included, shure you see some of those but they come separated from a piece that could come in one piece.
I over didi it with the weathering...
As you can see here, it is a small kit, it even feels like a 1/100 scale plane compared to almost every other 1/72 Valkire
My overall thoughts are: this kit could be alot more simple, and more fun with the adition of a few decals, it feels tiny, this is by far teh worst hasegawa kit I have builded, but as allways with that brand, once you finish the kit you'll have a fine looking plane
6/10
