Warning about the Trumpeter 1/72 F-100F !

[Navy Bird]

Ugh. Now I wonder how bad the Trumpy F-105D or RA-5C kits are that I have in the stash. Never really looked at either one of them very closely...

[Roy LeMont]

Ugh. Now I wonder how bad the Trumpy F-105D or RA-5C kits are that I have in the stash. Never really looked at either one of them very closely...

The F-105D has some issues around the cockpit. If you look at the kit assembled the instrument panel and coaming ride so high the pilot would be unable to see over them and out the front. I can't remember what the issue was that drove that; I believe it may have been the width of the fuselage in the cockpit area, or the cockpit opening itself. The main complaint on the RA-5C is that it lacks the fuselage "creases" that run along the bottom of the the canopies. You can minimize the visula impact of the lack of these by posing the canopies open. The intakes also have no trunking.

Cheers,

Roy

[Murph]

Hi Murph,

This is about my third or fourth attempt at creating an intake for the Esci F-100 and when the Trumpeter kits were released with their flattened noses (but wonderful separate leading edge slats) I thought I'd better see it through this time. It's based on the Esci intake part with a duct made essentially from a Hasegawa F-16. You have to cut the appropriate length off the Trumpeter nose to get it to fit. I did send a couple of examples to a chap in the States who was looking to do the same thing but he's following a different route and with any luck will end up with a viable after-market product.

Cheers,

Haydn.

Haydn,

Thanks for the info. I purchased the Trumpeter kits for the leading edge slats and the intakes, but I'm starting to think that grafting those items onto the old ESCI kits I have may be the better option, definitely for the F-100F. I also have looked at the Obscureco wings but both examples I saw were pretty badly warped.

Regards,

Murph

[Navy Bird]

Haydn,

Thanks for the info. I purchased the Trumpeter kits for the leading edge slats and the intakes, but I'm starting to think that grafting those items onto the old ESCI kits I have may be the better option, definitely for the F-100F. I also have looked at the Obscureco wings but both examples I saw were pretty badly warped.

Regards,

Murph

I recently purchased the F-8 wing from Obscureco, and it had no warping at all. Very nicely cast, actually, and superbly packaged to prevent any damage to the razor thin edges. I wonder if you saw some early samples of the F-100 wing that had some production problem? You can e-mail Chris at Obscureco and see what he thinks. Just use the e-mail link on his site.

Roy, thanks for the info on the F-105 and RA-5 kits. Neither problem seems to be in the same league as this F-100F error.

Cheers,

Bill

[Murph]

I recently purchased the F-8 wing from Obscureco, and it had no warping at all. Very nicely cast, actually, and superbly packaged to prevent any damage to the razor thin edges. I wonder if you saw some early samples of the F-100 wing that had some production problem? You can e-mail Chris at Obscureco and see what he thinks. Just use the e-mail link on his site.

Roy, thanks for the info on the F-105 and RA-5 kits. Neither problem seems to be in the same league as this F-100F error.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill,

These were two separate wing sets I had purchased from an online retail shop 3 to 4 years ago. I don't think they were early samples. They weren't unique in that respect; the Tornado resin wings with deployed slats/flaps I had bought many moons ago from another manufacturer had the same problem. Producing wing shapes without warpage is a major problem for aftermarket manufacturers; I don't envy them.

Regards,

Murph

Edited May 31, 2013 by Murph

[AnonymousAA72]

Well nothing surprises me any more with Trumpeter's aircraft releases. Yet another example of their lackadaisical approach to research. I'm afraid its down to chaps like Haydn to spot this kind of stuff, because you can be sure as 4+4=8 that any magazine review will give it a huge thumbs up.

Another stupid mistake from the home of stupid mistakes. "sigh"

Jonners

Another screwed pooch by Trumpeter.......oh dearie me.....just one point though in defence of magazines Jonners, being an ex-contributor to a few of them, its not just those that give these, these....... abominations unwarranted thumbs up - certain websites not a million miles from here do too!! Not mentioning names of course........

[hacker]

Could be that the wing was somewhere hot while sitting on the shelve and gotten warped. The proprietor probably never looked in the box to check it. It also could have gotten warped in transit also. The only alternative is to kit bash the Trumpeter kit with the Italeri kit to get the desire detail.

Edited May 31, 2013 by hacker

[RidgeRunner]

Quote

 I've already copied the Esci wheels in resin and created an intake that fits both the Trumpeter and Esci/Italeri kits so I thought I had all the problems sorted.....

 How did you make that, mate?

 

martin

[eaglesixfive]

Jeez.

 

Well, I guess the Trumpy 100C has all the 'other' issues too in both scales. Glad I didn't jump in and get a 1/48 C.

It seems Trumpys B Team make more kits than their A Team.

 

I remember when ESCI first released their 1/72 F100's. Could not believe how good it was back then. Obviously, it hasn't been knocked off its perch.

[RobertF]

Well, I can't say I'm totally surprised. Trumpeter's kits have been hit and miss before. A pity nevertheless.

 

It seems they're using the measuring and CAD system known as TLAR.   

(That Looks About Right)

Main tools: thumb and eyeball Mk. 1

 

So what would be a good F-100C/D kit in 1/48th?

 

Robert

[Tbolt]

35 minutes ago, RobertF said:

Well, I can't say I'm totally surprised. Trumpeter's kits have been hit and miss before. A pity nevertheless.

 

It seems they're using the measuring and CAD system known as TLAR.   

(That Looks About Right)

Main tools: thumb and eyeball Mk. 1

 

So what would be a good F-100C/D kit in 1/48th?

 

Robert

 

Problem is some of their mistakes are far from looking about right!

[DarrenH]

Be interested to know who exactly measured the Esci kit and the Italeri kits...oh that's right nobody did.

Like most "old" kits like say the Monogram F-105 people "think" they are good and couldn't be further from the truth.

None of these old kits have had rulers put up to them to anywhere near the degree ANY Trumpeter kit has.

yet the good old Monogram F-105 is about as bad as you can get..the Trumpeter F-84 showed up the Monogram one and even now the Trumpeter Stuka has shown up the Hasegawa one.

Why?

Because someone said someone said this was a good kit 25 years ago before we all found our verniers.

i wouldn't put faith in anything anyone said about an old kit because they are mostly wrong and because the canopy on a Trump kit does not fit an old unmeasured untested Esci kit in no way shape or form means the Trumpeter kit is dimensionally wrong.

you want dimensionally wrong go measure a Monogram F-105 supposedly a great kit..we if the canopy was in the right place, had some semblance of correct shape and was the right profile maybe.

Dont trust old wives tales about old kits they are generally wrong.

[Mr T]

Quite likely all you say is true, but there are still doubts about some of the size and shapes of some of Trumpeters' kits, for example the Vampire. Monogram were designing their kits without the advantage of modern design aids or the resources available from the internet, which Trumpeter have, but which they seem to use intermittently. I suspect there is a cost element in that to produce a lot of new kits, the money available for research gets spread a bit thin.

[Ben Brown]

I can't speak to the dimensions of the Monogram F-105 and how it compares to whatever are considered accurate drawings, but I have stood under a 1/1 F-105 and compared a built Monogram kit to it. The Monogram kit captures the look of the real thing very well. The look of the nose isn't off as badly as some believe. The slightly undersized radome and the too-thick and off center pitot tube combine to make the nose look odd.

 

As far as F-100s go, the late Dave Menard confirmed the old Monogram kit is the most accurate F-100 kit available, and Trumpeter's is a bit of a mess. He went so far as to measure the real thing. When Trumpeter released their 1/32 F-100D, he went over that one, too. I had the privilege of getting to know him via the Internet at the time, and we had a good time emailing back and forth, measuring this and that to see how the Trumpeter kit measured up. In the process, he discovered he had mistakenly claimed the Monogram 275-gal drop tanks were 1/4" too short. After measuring the real item, again, he found Monogram's were spot-on. For decent F-100 drawings, Dana Bell's in the Detail & Scale are pretty accurate, according to Dave. The Monogram kit does have its problems, but it's a better place to start for any version of the F-100, other than the YF-100 (Lindberg's is actually more of a YF-100). 

 

Ben

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Ben Brown