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Hello All, I saw this at the Cosford show for the princely sum of £3: I remember building this as a kid and even then being dismayed at how badly moulded, strangely engineered and ill-fitting it was. So I bought it as a challenge in between my helicopter builds. I had not mis-remembered! The plastic hasn't flowed through the mould properly, so the thin edges are all curved where the plastic hasn't reached the edge and there are pinholes where the plastic has not joined up over features. The metallic finish plastic shows lots of swirls and join lines. The plastic hasn't filled parts of the undercarriage and pilot, resulting in paper-thin parts. And the fit of the fuselage parts is awful: I made a rudimentary instrument panel and consoles: Much filling and sanding and priming and sanding later, it's starting to look joined up: And I have to say that, once the flash was cleaned up (how can you have short shots and flash at the same time????), the undercarriage doors and air brakes fitted much better than many other kits of that same period (I had to add the tiny white shim): So I will do a bit more filling and sanding, then more primer and a light sanding before a natural metal finish. Thanks for looking and I hope it wasn't too distressing! Adrian

Hello All, Here's the old Airfix F5A. It is OOB apart from a vac canopy, my own markings and a ton of filler. Build thread is here. Finished with AK True Metal (which I heartliy recommend) and a mixture of kit and home brew markings: Thanks for looking, Adrian

I returned to the hobby app 18 months ago, and have completed a number of models in that time but this is my first WIP, so please bear with me. I have always liked the slim elegant shape of the Northrop F5 Freedom Fighter, it has the appearance of speed whilst stationary, and this along with its varied schemes and ordanance give it huge modelling appeal. Recently I had a few days holiday whilst SHMBO did not, and decided to indulge myself with a fast uninterupted build of the Trumpeter T38. I completed it in just two and a half days, thoroughly enjoyed the kit and love the finished article. This led to me deciding to do an F5a to acompany it, and to build as a quickie alongside my more serious Hasegawa skyhawk. A fleabay search uncovered a cheap option in the Tiger Hobbies release of the canceled Tan models kit. I researched this kit and found very little info - but what I did find sounded good for the asking price of £9.99 inc postage. So hear goes: sprue shots etc. The kit comes in a sturdy white box with basic labels attached. Inside are just three grey sprues and one clear with... ... a cracking looking (?) decal sheet, inc. lots of stencils... ... and an instruction sheet and paint guide. Assembly is covered in just 7 very simple steps, though the clarity does make this more interesting...lol the paint guide is very basic, with just generic colour names and a very "busy" decal guide. Quality of the plastic and detail is mixed, the plastic is quite and brittle, and engraving is deep and soft, kind of reminds me of some of the not so good Airfix kits in its appearance but then again some of those can be turned into good display items with a little work ..... we will see....... One interesting (read as -confusing, and a possible problem) are the sprue attachments, some of these ar large and the numbers are...... mad. One wing has three normal looking gates the other has ELEVEN!!!! and some of these could be awkward with the brittle plastic. overal first impressions are -for £9.99 inc- good, though even I can see that this kit is likely to be an "impression" of an F5a, rather than a mm perfect scale copy. As I said "... we will see..." I have got quite a lot further than this in the last week, just need to upload the images etc... Ian