Special Hobby T-2 Buckeye Anniversary Markings (SH48231) 1:48

[Mike]

T-2 Buckeye Anniversary Markings (SH48231)

1:48 Special Hobby

 

 

Following WWII, the US Air Force embraced the jet engine wholeheartedly, with the Navy lagging behind a little due to the slow spool-up of the early jet engines that made wave-offs and go-arounds a cheek-clenching prospect.  By the early 50s the T-28 Trojan was showing its age, so those in command began looking for a replacement.  North American of P-51 Mustang fame won a contract in the mid-50s, and the T-2A flew by 1958, entering limited service a year later, with only one jet engine installed in the earliest variant, which was also called the T2J-1 at the time, although consolidation of naming in 1962 renamed it as the T-2A.  By the time the T-2B entered service, the engine count had increased by one to give it more speed and similarity of operation to the aircraft that the trainees would eventually fly after graduation.  Around 600 airframes were built in total, and the type had a long career that spanned around 40 years, with most pilots during that time having spent part of their training flying a Buckeye, the name given to it that relates to the location of the factory in Ohio that made them, which has a state tree by that name.

 

The T-2C was the final variant in US service, with GE engines replacing the Pratt & Whitney units, presumably for efficiency and maintenance reasons, as they brought no extra power to the party.  50+ D and E variants were built for overseas operators in South America and more notably Greece, who took 40 and are still flying them at time of writing.  In US service the Buckeye was retired in 2008 when it was replaced by the more modern T-45 Goshawk, which is a substantially re-engineered and Navalised version of the BAe Hawk, as used by the RAF and the famous Red Arrows.  The Goshawk is faster and more agile than its predecessor, getting close to the sound barrier and with advanced avionics that mimics those of the current fighters better than the worn-out Buckeyes could manage.  A few T-2s are still flying in private hands, and make appearances at air shows, as do the Greek airframes if you’re lucky.

 

 

The Kit

This is a welcome reboxing of the 2009 tooling that initially appeared under another manufacturer’s name, but with Special Hobby doing the tooling, while subsequent boxings were released under Special hobby’s own name, so if you missed out on those, now is the time.  The kit arrives in a top-opening box that has a pair of profiles of the decal options laid over a merged US and Greek flag.  Inside are five sprues of grey styrene, two small clear sprues, one for the canopy parts, a small bag with thirty-nine resin parts, two decal sheets, a fret of pre-painted Photo-Etch (PE) parts, and finally an instruction booklet printed in colour on glossy white paper, with painting and decaling profiles on the rear pages, followed by some adverts for some of Special Hobby’s other products.  Detail is good, and improved further by the resin that’s included, especially a pair of ejection seats and four side consoles that are very well done, as is the rear-seater’s coaming, especially the wiring on the rear.  Engraved panel lines, accompanied by raised and recessed features where you’d expect them go to make a good-looking model that has a reputation for being one of those models that you need to keep your wits about you when building, as there are fit issues that will need fettling.  It’s certainly not unbuildable as some wavers-of-hands would bemoan, as it has been made by many a modeller in the years since it first appeared, with results varying according to level of skill and patience applied during building and painting, as with most things.

 

 

 

Please note that the swirls visible on some of the parts above are from the moulding process and will disappear under paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Construction begins with the cockpit, diving straight into the instrument panel, which has a lamination of two pre-painted instrument panels layers placed over the flat front under the coaming, with a styrene part with raised and recessed details on the surface for those who don’t like PE wrangling, a job that is repeated to make the rear instrument panel, which is a different shape, with the deeply recessed rear of the panel depicting the backs of the instruments and their wiring.  The four resin side consoles are detailed with additional parts, including the rudder pedals from the sides, all of which has colour call outs using letters that correspond with a table of Gunze Sangyo paint codes, which carries on throughout the build.  The next step is bringing together the various sub-assemblies on the cockpit floor, adding bulkheads behind each pilot, control columns, two more small parts on the tutor’s coaming and one on the student’s, and a rounded enclosure on a shelf behind him.  There is a lamination of two PE parts for the mini-coaming around the instrument box on the top of the tutor’s coaming, which represents the instruments deep within.  Finally, a small bulkhead is fitted to the front of the cockpit assembly.  The rest of the internals need to be built and painted before closing the fuselage, starting with the long intake trunks, which are each made of two halves, attaching to a bulkhead that has the first compressor faces moulded-in, which should be painted metallic before installation.  The same part-count and a similar bulkhead is used to create the exhausts, although the painting will be more of a burnt metallic shade for the whole assembly, thanks to the high temperatures there.  The nose gear bay is in two halves, so mating them neatly will reduce any clean-up work before you can apply the paint.  Adding 10 grams of nose weight during closure, along with the cockpit, intakes, nose gear bay, and exhausts, after which you can deal with the fuselage seams in your preferred manner.  The rest of the flying surfaces are made up for a break from detail work, including the ailerons, elevator panels and separate flying surfaces, flaps and the two rudder panels, each one put together from two halves.  The main planes are separated by the fuselage and are provided as top and bottom surfaces, adding two gear bay wall sections before closure, painting them and the detail moulded into the upper wing interior as you go.  The wings, elevators and their panels, plus the two rudder halves are all installed, leaving the flaps until after completion of the lower fuselage.  The open lower fuselage is filled with an insert with a small resin insert in the insert to be inserted (yikes!) to add detail where it would otherwise have been impossible with a two-part fuselage design, then a quartet of small intakes are fitted on marked locations on the lower sides of the fuselage where the engines are found.  The exhaust trunks are finished with their pen-nib fairings, and the intakes are extended with a two-part fairing and fine lip to complete the assembly that is plugged into the fuselage sides under the rear cockpit.  Finally, the arrestor hook is glued under the tail with a PE support near the hinge-point, the whole length of it painted in black and white stripes.

 

The flaps can be attached tucked away for flight, or deployed for take-off and landing by adding three brackets per side to the leading edges before installing them in their wells.  A clear light is inserted into a socket under the belly, and another flat light with a PE bezel is fixed under the nose, just behind a probe.  The main gear legs have a sturdy upper section that needs the pegs cutting from the pivots, and these are joined to the lower on a stepped join for strength, adding PE tie-down lugs, separate scissor-links and a retractor jack that needs a 2mm piece of 1.5mm diameter rod fitting on one side.  The leg has a two-part captive bay door applied to the outer surface, while the inner bay door hangs down, and is retracted by a delicate resin H-frame.  The wheels are two parts, and slip over the stub axle at the bottom of the yoke, facing inboard.  The nose gear is a single strut with an additional cylinder added to the front, and two scissor-links at the rear, installing another two-part wheel that is different from the main gear wheels.  The bay doors are simple side-opening parts that hinge along the bay sides.  Flipping the model over, the two-part tip-tanks with clear light added to the centre outboard and with a clear tip insert, are fitted to the wings, with three more lights on the tail fin plus a pitot probe, and two strakes on the fuselage sides under the tail fillet.  A conformal landing light lens is inserted into a cut-out in the port wing leading edge, fitting the two resin ejection seats into the cockpit, which were painted and decaled while the cockpit was being made, adding a stripey black/yellow actuation handle to the headbox from the resin parts.  The windscreen is glued into the front of the cockpit over the forward coaming, fitting the canopy in either open or closed positions.  Before it is installed, a bulkhead is fixed under the rear of the canopy, with a resin bracing strut in the centre and a pair of rear-view mirrors in the front frame.  To pose the canopy closed, a short ram is fixed under the cross-brace, with a longer one used to lift the canopy up for crew access.

 

 

Markings

There are two decal options on one sheet, with the second sheet containing stencils for around the airframe.  From the box you can build one of the following:

 

• T-2C Buckeye, Bu.no.155241, No.309, VT-23 ‘The Professionals’, NAS Kingsville, Texas, 1976, marking the US Bicentennial.
• T-2E Buckeye, Bu.no.160084, No.84, 363 Air Training School (MEA) ‘Danaos’, 120 Air Training Wing (PEA), Kalamata, Hellenic Air Force, celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the 363 MEA.

 

 

 

 

The decals are printed using a digital process and have good registration, sharpness, and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut loosely around the printed areas.  This means that the carrier film on their decals can be coaxed away from the printed part of the decal after they have been applied, effectively rendering them carrier film free, making the completed decals much thinner and more realistic, and obviating the need to apply successive coats of clear varnish to hide the edges of the carrier film.  It’s a great step further in realism from my point of view, and saves a good quantity of precious modelling time into the bargain.

 

 

Conclusion

It’s good to see this kit back on the shelves in my preferred scale, and with marking for US and Greek aircraft included to widen the appeal.  The resin does a good job of increasing the detail of the model, especially those ejection seats and other cockpit details.

 

Incidentally, if you have one of the early boxings and don’t like the vacformed canopies that come with those, Special Hobby have released just the canopy sprue for purchase separately, which you can find here.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

[Zulu Lima]

I love the new details, canopy, and decals.  I'll be all over this if they release one in standard USN colors.

 

By the way, you've made the same mistake I have by coining the term "colour density".  We already have a word for that: saturation.