Reviewed by David W. Aungst

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In the midst of "B-58 fever" while building the big Monogram B-58A Hustler, I was picking up any and all update sets I could find for the big bomber kit. The image of this landing gear set on-line in the Squadron Shop web pages looked really good. How could I resist?

The Update Set Described

This set comes packaged as a "bubble pack" card. The set is made up of 13 pieces of white metal.

I will have to admit some disappointment on getting this set. The pieces are not molded as cleanly as they looked in the on-line image. Not that this is a really big deal. I can clean them up with a little time and some X-acto tools. What really disappointed me was that the white metal piece are nothing more than simple copies of the Monogram kit plastic landing gear pieces, down to having some of the the same mold marks and mold irregularities.

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I had hoped (expected?) that the pieces were updated and re-detailed before they were molded. I guess I have been spoiled by the brass landing gear sets I have seen from Teknics. The only updates I could find in these white metal pieces were some lightning holes that had been drilled out where the plastic Monogram pieces are only engraved details for the holes.

Since the big Monogram kit has some weight to it, and I am adding a number of after-market update sets to the kit which will minimally increase the kits weight, I suppose it will be good to have metal landing gear. It will be stronger that the plastic kit pieces. Overall, though, I do not know that this would have been really needed. The Monogram kit landing gear is not really all that weak in its construction.

One thing nice about the landing gear is its color. Real B-58s have aluminum color landing gear struts. Since this set is a nice shade of silver metal, I am considering that I may not need to paint the landing gear. I think a quick buffing with my motor tool will create a nicely finished set of struts. All I would need to do is a little bit of detail painting and washing to highlight details and call the pieces "done".

Purchased by reviewer

Text and Images Copyright © 2009 by David W Aungst
Page Created 9 December, 2009
Last updated 9 December, 2009

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