dh Hornet PR5

[kitnut617]

Well you would have to give them a different designation Kit, the Merlin 140 was a 130 but had contra-prop gear and propellers, check out the Short Sturgeon specs.

[PR19_Kit]

Well you would have to give them a different designation Kit, the Merlin 140 was a 130 but had contra-prop gear and propellers, check out the Short Sturgeon specs.

Oh bother.

Kit's 2nd rule applies, I'll change the backstory to suit. 

[kitnut617]

Sorry mate -----   

But here's a Hornet with Merlin 140's that I'm working on. I'll have to re-designate it though, you've taken 5   

[PR19_Kit]

I like it! 

And a sensible two-seater as well. Which kit is that?

[kitnut617]

The old Frog kit Kit,  I've changed a few things though. The nose, the cockpit and the fin/rudder (made it bigger). Drop tanks are my own castings and a gun pack will be attached under the fuselage. I had called it a Hornet FAW5 ---

[PR19_Kit]

Here's the port wing with the horrendous fit between the nacalle and the wing leading edge on the inboard side.

The step's so large I'm not sure that PSR will sort it out, and I may need to pad the step with some styrene.



I've got both wings and nacelles assembled now, and I've sawn off the tips prior to adding the wing extensions.

[kerick]

Yeah, trim that slot a little and put in a plastic sheet shim. No better filler on plastic than plastic.

[kitnut617]

I've built a number of these Czech made kits and I've always had the impression there's multiple people making the masters of a single kit. It seems like no one is checking the outcome until to late. It doesn't seem to matter which manufacturer it is either, they all have these fit problems.

[NARSES2]

I've built a number of these Czech made kits and I've always had the impression there's multiple people making the masters of a single kit.

Whilst my thoughts have never strayed down that path I can see where your coming from. Their 109's were definitely done by someone else as they are fantastic. I tried to get to the bottom of it at Telford last year, but unfortunately whilst "Mr AZ's" English was way better than my Czech it wasn't good enough. I build a fair few AZ kits as I like what they do and I must admit I now just take "fettling" as par for the course.

[zenrat]

The Azur (Special Hobby) Breguet 693 I am working on has so far gone together well.  Nacelle to wing fit is better than some mainstream kits i've built.  It still needs filler but not a lot.
It certainly looks to be better than this Hornet.

[PR19_Kit]

Three PSR sessions was enough to fill that yawning step on the port wing/engine nacelle, thank goodness.

Now I'm about to start extending the wings, if I can drag myself away from oggling the Eduard Sikorsky S-43 kit anyway. 

[PR19_Kit]

I've got the basic wing extension added to the starboard wing now. Lots of filing and sanding and PSR to go of course, plus some panel scribing and cutting out the tips to take the nav lights.



I'm rather disappointed in this kit, almost NONE of the parts fit properly. As an example the backing disc to the prop assembly should be pretty straightforward, after all it's a disc with a hole in it, right? Not for AZ, the hole just isn't large enough for the tiny prop shaft to fit through! 

How difficult can it be to get that right?

Also it's the only kit I've ever built where the plastic reacted badly to the Presto putty I use. In a couple of places on the engine nacelle the plastic under the putty layer has softened badly enough so that I've had to strip all the putty off and try something else.

[chrisonord]

I can't remember  what kit it was, possibly an obscure  eastern European/Russian kit of something, and that suffered badly  when I  used  that putty on it too.

[kitbasher]

Following this build with interest, Kit, in order to better understand the pros and cons of the AZ Hornet.  Resisted the temptation yesterday to pick up an F1 but haven't ruled out picking up any one of the boxings (other than the PR2). 

There's lots of comment about the kit on the AZ thread but the PR5 thread is the first (I think the only) one involving a build.  I realised there's whiffery afoot but for me at least it would be good if you would consider providing a brief summary of the pros and cons of the kit from a build perspective, Kit.

The Skybirds 86 kits (I've an F1) are being held up as the best in 1/72 but yes, not without fault (windscreen shape, for example), while the Special Hobby kits (I've an F3/F4) look nice but have many faults.  The FROG kit got a drubbing in one review when it first came out but is not without its loyal supporters (I had one - wings used on my Gloster Mercury - and it's pretty crude).  So your take on where the AZ kit sits in the 'Hornet League Table' would make interesting reading.

[PR19_Kit]

Dave, it doesn't matter which one of the AZ Hornets you buy, you get the same plastic in all of them. The only difference between the kits is the decal sheet and the box.

You can make ANY variant from any of their kits as all the bits are included in all of them, both sizes of tailplanes, both fins, and both under-nose fairings, with and without guns. That makes it ideal for whiffery such as I'm inflicting on it as you can chop and change as you desire of course.

As for the kit itself, I'm less than impressed on more than one front. The sprue gates I mentioned earlier are a pain to get rid of, you have to file or cut in TWO planes to get rid of them totally, and the general fit of the parts, even once you've trimmed the gates off, isn't that wonderful. I've had to PSR the leading edge joints for example. There are no locating pins at all, it's all 'glue by eye', something I thought was long gone from the plastic kit world.

The styrene itself is strange, it has a softness that's not apparent in other manufacturers' stuff, and as I mentioned above, it softened under the action of my putty, which I've never had before. The difference between it and the styrene sheet I used for the wing extensions is quite marked.

I can't really comment on the model's accuracy, except that the panel lines don't align with any plans I've managed to find, and don't even align with AZ's own instruction sheet! It looks like a Hornet to me, but then a) I can't recall seeing a real one, although I may have in my early years, and b) I don't worry that much about RW shapes as I'm almost always going to be whiffing the model anyway.

I've never seen a Special Hobby Hornet (perhaps I should get one?) but I've built a couple of FROG ones, and I have a couple of Skybirds86 ones in The Loft. From the engineering point of view the Skybirds kit knocks SPOTS off all of the others, although I have yet to summon up the courage to build one, but I expect I will pretty soon now. It's true the FROG kit is very 'boilerplate' in character, but that too looks like a Hornet.

I'd put the AZ kit in the middle of the FROG-AZ-Skybirds league table at present.