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Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II Starter Set (A55010) 1:72 Airfix The F-35, previously known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is an American led multi-national effort to bring a fifth-generation multi-role aircraft to several Allied nations, whilst spreading the cost of development between them. The Lockheed X-35 won the JSF contest over the peculiar-looking Boeing X-32, and development went ahead, culminating in its first flight at the end of 2006. There are three variants of the F-35, the A, which is a conventional aircraft designed to take off and land on made-up airfields on terra firma, the B, which is destined to be the successor to the Harrier, or AV-8B as it is known in the US with V/STOVL capabilities, and finally the C model, which is the carrier-based cat & trap variant. The F-35B is the most complex of the three variants, as it has an additional lift fan installed behind the pilot, which is powered from a shaft linked to the engine. There was, and likely always be a great deal of negative speculation about the validity of the additional dead weight that is carried around after the take-off phase of flight, when the aircraft has transferred to horizontal flight and the fan is essentially redundant until landing. This is likely informed partly by the almost universal love for the Harrier, and the lack of success of the interesting but ungainly Yak-38 Forger, which is the only other production aircraft to use such a technique to achieve hover, as well as the comparatively low fuel load that can be carried as a result. It can't have helped that the British AND Americans hold the name Lightning in high regard due to the success of the BAC Lightning of the 60s and the WWII P-38 Lightning, respectively. As well as all the latest avionics and weapons systems, the F-35 is also a low-observable airframe, more commonly known as stealthy, and has two internal bays that can be used to carry munitions, as well as six external hard-points for when stealth is not the primary mission focus. It also exhibits the same style blended fuselage and wings as the F-22 Raptor, with semi-blended engine intakes and heavily canted twin-tails, although it sports only one engine compared to the Raptor's two. The engine has a flexible nozzle that is used in the Short Take-off Vertical Landing (STOVL) process, when it is directed downward to support the rear of the airframe while the lift fan supports the forward section. In horizontal flight, the flexible nozzle is used to vector thrust, enhancing manoeuvrability in much the same manner as the F-22. The first of the F-35Bs arrived with the RAF in July of 2012 for evaluation, with further deliveries resulting in a total strength of thirty aircraft, with three remaining in the US for initial pilot training. One airframe has already been lost in 2021 as a result of an accident, bring down the total available for operational use to twenty-six. These aircraft are significantly more expensive than originally planned, and successive changes to the order have come and gone, giving the builders of the two new aircraft carriers on which they are carried some sleepless nights throughout the construction process. The intention is to increase strength to 74, with an option of expanding the total purchase back up to the original 138 at some point, but that could change at any moment due to the vagaries of the political landscape, regardless of who holds the purse-strings. The moaning and complaining about the looks and functionality of the aircraft is bound to continue ad nauseam, and when (if) it comes time to replace them with something else many years down the line, probably with an aircraft that doesn’t have a pilot, the moaning will change to wishing they could keep the Lightning. Was it ever thus? The Kit This is a brand-new tooling from Airfix in 1:72, and has been launched in three boxings initially - with, and without additional aircraft that are linked to it in some way over the years. This starter set arrives in a red-themed box with a large header that lends itself to vertical display, and shows pictures of the six included paints, glue and brushes that come with it, although the paint colours are more generic and colourful than those in the box. There are four sprues and two separate fuselage halves, with a return to ‘ye olden days’ for the sprues, which have no protective runners around the edges. That’s not a criticism, just an observation, although eager hands are perhaps a little more likely to knock parts from the sprues when delving into the box. There’s a single clear canopy in a separate bag, a small decal sheet and the instruction booklet, which is in the new style with colour throughout, although the profiles can be found on the back of the box for a change. Gluing locations are shown in yellow throughout the instruction steps, and the moulding over-flow chambers or ‘pips’ are marked out in green to help the novice, who may not have encountered them before. It is a starter set, after all. Detail is good throughout, with just a few light sink-marks present on the flying surfaces of the wings where the surface is double-thickness to achieve a sharp trailing edge. A few moments of work with some filler and sanding sticks should see those off before you start building. Construction begins with completion of the lower fuselage, adding the nose on a large tongue to achieve a strong bond between the two parts. Three bulkheads are then installed behind the cockpit, mid-way and at the rear of the main fuselage, the latter having a depiction of the rear of the engine face, after which you can bring the two fuselage halves together, taking care to test-fit, as the wings may need some fettling to ensure they fit flush. A quick test indicated that the ejector-pin marks on the inner face of the wings might be the cause of possible issues, so forewarned is forearmed. The cockpit is moulded into the upper fuselage, as are the three gear bays, but don’t let that put you off, as the detail is excellent for the scale. The flat instrument panel in the cockpit is adorned with a decal, and the ejection seat is inserted into the rear of the ‘pit. The seat is a little simplified for the purists, and there is a pilot figure included on the sprues, which should improve the look if you decide to use it. The twin fins slot into sockets in the tail outriggers that completes the main airframe, so perhaps a little flying round with a ‘NEEEEOWWWWM!’ would be appropriate about now. There is a custom stand included in this kit, and it forms the shape of a simplified 3D shadow of the airframe, and comes with two uprights, one for gear-up horizontal flight, the other for gear down hovering, both of which come with instructions on which steps to follow and which to ignore. For straight-and-level flight a two-part exhaust trunk is made up from halves and has the exhaust ring glued to the end, fixing it in turn to the rear bulkhead over the circular engine face. The two doors over the engine are a single part to glue over the underside of the engine, adding the main, nose gear and lift-fan doors under the nose, plus lift fan and intake doors behind the cockpit on the top-side. The pilot and canopy are then fitted, installing the canopy without glue and finishing off with the longer upstand to plug into the base. There’s painting and decaling of course, but the model is finished for in-flight operation. For hovering, an angled trunk is made from two halves, adding the exhaust ring to it before gluing it in place under the rear, and splitting the doors in half before installing them in the open position. The nose gear and lift exhaust bays are added in the open position under the nose, fitting the nose gear leg with integral wheel into the bay, and applying the main bay doors in advance of the legs, which have separate wheels to add, and several moulding overflow pips to remove as you go. On top, the intake and lift-fan doors are fitted in the open position, the lift-fan door a single part that opens at the rear, guiding air into the intake as it slows to a halt. The pilot and canopy are fixed in the same manner as before, the canopy without glue on a couple of pegs moulded into the part. You have the choice of displaying your model on its wheels, or using the shorter stand to plug into the base to simulate hovering. Markings There is a single decal option on the rear of the box, No.617 Squadron RAF, embarked on HMS Queen Elizabeth (Carrier Strike Group 21) in 2021. In case you didn’t know, that’s the Dambuster squadron, who were first to operate the F-35 when it arrived in the UK. Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas. All except the instrument panel decal are in low-viz grey, and the IP has a clear background to avoid tricky paint matching with the rest of the interior. Conclusion A simple model with a low parts count of 42 that belies the detail included therein, which would permit a novice, an expert or anyone in-between to create a creditable replica of the UK’s latest carrier-borne fighter that even has a real-life carrier or two to lift-off from when away from home shores. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

F-35A Lightning II 1:48 Kitty Hawk The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as the F-35 was originally known was a multi-national project to create a multi-role fighter for the new millennium and beyond, led by the US, with the UK and other nations taking a greater or lesser part, with a view to taking delivery of airframes once the project reaches fruition. The A model is the traditional forward flight only conventional take-off aircraft that is destined to operate from its operator's airbases, so has none of the trappings of the STOVL capable B model, leaving extra space within the airframe for fuel and weapons load. It is designed to replace much of the F-16's functionality whilst adding stealth, more correctly termed low-observability into the mix, although it will also replace some of the A-10's capacity whilst being much faster over the ground, so theoretically harder to shoot down. How much of the A-10's work-load will be taken up with cheaper, almost disposable drones by the time the F-35A comes into service is as yet unknown. The first flight of the F-35A was in early 2006, and continued test flying with various hold-ups putting it further behind schedule, which coupled with increasing costs has caused constant griping about its viability in the press. Following its flight testing at speeds of up to Mac 16, and subsequent grounding of the whole fleet due to the failure of a power unit, weapons testing began in October this year (2012) with the test firing of an AIM-120 BVR Air-to-Air missile, the replacement of the old Sparrow missile. The Kit This release follows hot on the heels of Kitty Hawk's recent F-35B, which was reviewed here in August. Although it may look very similar to the uninformed on quick glance, the two airframes are significantly different, and consequentially so are these two kits. The box is an overall white top-opening one with another nice painting of an F-35A airborne over broken cloud. Inside are six sprues of light grey styrene, the two large fuselage halves, a small clear sprue, a small but busy Photo-Etch (PE) sheet, two sheets of colourful decals, the instruction booklet with full colour cover, and an additional photo-instruction sheet for the PE parts. First impressions are good, and the fuselage parts are covered in fine detail of the same style as the B-model, although the styrene is a paler grey of the same type as that of the new Jaguar A kit, which should be good news for those that weren't keen on the darker more brittle plastic of the F-35B. The build begins conventionally with the cockpit, which is reasonably simple due to the fact that it's depicting a modern "glass" cockpit with Multi-Function Displays (MFDs). The ejector seat is made up of six parts, including a pull-handle at the front of the seat cushion and a control box attached to the left side. A set of PE seatbelt harnesses are included, plus a cover for the top of the head-box to hide the joint between two main parts. The instrument panel is a single piece with two side sections and one middle section having raised details, while the main section is flat, ready to receive the instrument panel decal that is included on the decal sheet. Some boxes affix to the rear deck, and throttle and control levers to the recessed side consoles. Unsurprisingly, the nose gear bay is attached to the underside of the cockpit, and this is made up from individual sides to maximise the detail. As seems to be the way with all recent Kitty Hawk kits, the gear leg is shown installed before the bay is placed in the fuselage, but with this kit, that's entirely optional, because all three legs fit into sockets in the roof of the bay, so can be installed at any time. The gear leg is nicely detailed however, and has a separate oleo-scissor and retraction jack that is made up from two parts. The main gear bays are built up from two parts each, with the larger side a separate part, and a similarly detailed gear leg. The main wheels are made from two halves, with the outer hub moulded into the tyre, while the rear hub is a separate part that installs into a recess. The nose-gear wheel is a single part, and none of the tyres have any weighting, although that's easy to remedy with a sanding stick if you feel the need. The twin intakes are next up, with the two trunks joining within the fuselage to feed the single engine with much-needed air. Each trunk is made from two halves, split diagonally at the corners, and there are a few shallow ejector pin marks that will need cleaning up near the open mouth. These mate at the conjoined end with a basic rendition of the engine, which makes up from two halves, and has fan faces front and rear, with additional stator vanes on the front face, and a PE burner ring at the rear. The exhaust trunk is a separate section, again made from two halves, with an internal ring added at the exhaust end. The exhaust petals themselves are supplied either as a one-piece styrene ring, which has some nice detail moulded in, or as a series of PE parts that are formed into a circle, and then joined together. The inner sleeve is formed into a simple cylinder, while the outer petals have a cylindrical base, but have an etched fold so that they can be bend inward to give the familiar conical shape to the outside. A narrow ring with serrated detail is formed into a cylinder, with the trailing serrations bent in slightly, and then placed at the base of the exhaust to conform to the shape. This is clearly the more complex option, and while it offers better and more in-scale detail, it also gives you the chance of disaster. The back-up styrene part will provide a very useful safety net if you're either phobic of PE, or are unlucky enough to make a mess of it. One of the key components of the F-35's low-observability is that it is capable of carrying some weapons in internal bays, reducing external clutter and the radar signature that the weapons would return. The main bays are on the underside of the aircraft, and these are portrayed in the kit as two "bathtubs" that have separate end-caps and plenty of moulded in detail. There is a minor mistake in the instructions of the initial batch at this point (stages 7 &8), which seems to revolve around the incorrect installation of a couple of boxes in the bays that aren't included in the kit. There are however a pair of thick cable trunks that run down each side of the bay, and these are supplied as separate parts to give them a proper 3D look. Each bay is supplied with a JDAM inertially guided smart bombs to give the bay some purpose, and to busy them up. The intake mounted Air-to-Air weapons bays are moulded closed on this kit, but their openings can be seen on the sides of the fuselage due to the raised detail around them. When all the bays are complete and painted, they are dropped into the lower fuselage, starting with the nose gear bay and the weapons bays, then the engine and its intake trunking, which also includes an additional part of the intake lip, and then the cockpit, which fits atop the nose gear bay, and the main gear bays outboard of the weapons bays. In the top fuselage half two parts are added to complete the bay for the cannon on the starboard side, and the refuelling receptacle on the spine of the aircraft. Once installed, the two fuselage halves are joined together, and the model will then start to look more like an aircraft. Three PE mesh grilles are added to the upper fuselage, two on the cannon fairing, and one on the prominent fairing on the port side. The F-35's blended wings are relatively small, and are made up from two halves, plus a two piece leading edge slat, and two piece flaperon, with a wingtip recognition light in clear (not numbered in the instructions) finishing off the job. The joint with the fuselage is stepped to add strength to the arrangement, and three sockets on the underside of the fuselage help hold it in place. The twin elevators build from two parts each and plug into the rear of the fuselage either side of the exhaust. A separate tip to the nose is added at this stage, presumably to remove the need to hide any seam going through the nose, which is a thoughtful touch. The raised sensor blister with two flat glazed panes is added to the underside, although this part isn't all that clear in places, suffering from a little distortion. An absolute profusion of bay doors are installed next, and this makes the two steps (15 & 16) look rather cluttered, because every door has a significant hinging system added to it within the diagram, so care is the order of the day here. The larger weapon bay doors and the outer main gear bay doors have two individual hinges each, which locate within their respective bays, and the inner weapons bay doors have four each, again adding to the detail. Inside each weapons bay is a flip-out pylon for the AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, which have to be placed clear of the bays for firing. These sit close to the inner bay doors close to the ground, and each missile is made up from a pair of body halves with four winglets moulded into the seamline plane, and four additional winglets as separate parts perpendicular to those. The vertical(ish) stabilisers are added in the final stage, along with the refuelling bay doors, which can be posed open or close, and the beautifully clear canopy part. The canopy of the F-35 opens forwards as a single part, and this is possible by leaving the tab in place that fits into a slot in the front of the instrument coaming. There are a large number of PE parts to detail the latch mechanism for this area, including a lower-lip for the canopy itself, and a row of engagement teeth on its underside. The corresponding slots are already moulded into the cockpit sills, and additional X-shaped PE parts are added to detail this are further. A pair of canopy rams are also included to support the open canopy. All-in-all, quite an impressive feature. The decals are supplied on two sheets, and are split between the AF-01 Prototype with black stabilisers that have a large red lightning strike running diagonally across them, and AF-06 the first production airframe that made its maiden flight at Fort Worth before being transferred to Edwards Air Force Base. AF-06 has a full set of lo-viz decals, while AF-01 has a mixture of multi-national flags, full colour badges and lo-viz decals. In addition to the decals that are detailed in colour on the rear cover of the instruction booklet, there are also a host of national roundels in hi-viz and lo-viz for the modeller that wants to try their hand at building a speculative in-service machine from their chosen nation. Conclusion Another impressive release from Kitty Hawk that deserves to do well. It represents the most up-to-date F-35A model we have to hand at present, and although the in-service machines will change as time goes by, their main features should still be captured by this kit. The detail is good throughout, and although a decal for the main instrument panel might seem a little simplistic, the panel is fully glazed, and would be difficult to represent any other way in truth. Inclusion of a pilot figure is also a nice touch, and detail on this is also good, although he will need a little filler to deal with a sink mark in his lower abdomen, but this shouldn't ruin any detail due to where it is. Highly recommended. Available soon from Hannants Review sample courtesy of and available soon from major hobby shops