Having been out of production for quite some time, I was happy when last year I found that kit in my LHS (of course, two weeks after I finished the build, Revell re-released it…). It is a lovely kit, nice level of detail, especially the cockpit is really good, even the seats are okay. Ish. Of course there is always room for improvement, so I added some oxygen hoses and scratchbuilt the ejection seat rails. The seats themselves are Quick Boost.
The only thing missing out of the box is a proper weapons load. As the E version’s sole purpose is to haul ridiculous amounts of ordnance through the sky, it needs a good heavy load to look the part. I went for GBU-12s and CBUs, courtesy of Hasegawa’s weapons sets.
Way too late I noticed that the decals provided are basically for a trainer aircraft of the 57th Wing from Nellis AFB – so no Desert Storm bird this time, I guess. Anyway, I think it is safe to assume that these planes are maintained to a very high standard, weathering was therefore kept to a minimum. To spice the Gunship Grey monotony up a bit, I scratchbuilt some protective covers and used Eduard’s RBF tags.
