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T-45

by Fotios Rouch

 

T-45

 


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Introduction

 

The T-45 may not be the prettiest trainer operated by the Navy/Marines, but it is here to stay now!

It is a relatively small jet with a big hump, but it is white and orange and therefore important to my collection of navy trainers. When the Hasegawa TA-4J and the Collect-Aire T-39 get released I will have all the trainers I care for (I still have to complete the Collect-Aire Turbo Mentor and Monogram Trojan).

 

 

Collect-Aire's T-45 In The Box



The kit is quite nicely done. It is sourced from the LF group in the Czech Republic. As you can tell from the kit parts pictures included it contains resin, photoetch, vacform and paper representing the instrument dials.

The fuselage and wing parts were very straight and there was no warpage. The cockpit is fairly complete with nice photoech instruments that sandwich the instrument paper printouts. The ejection seats will look familiar to some resin aftermarket aficionados. It saved me from having to replace them with the ones from Pavla for instance.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

The airbrakes are nicely done in photoetch. They would very difficult to do in resin being so thin and perforated. I was pleasantly surprised to find little folding photoech parts to represent the two little exhaust scoops behind the cockpit. All the blade antennae are provided in photoetch.

 

 

You will enjoy the amount of detail provided in photoetch for the front landing gear too. Pay attention there and use the World Airpower Journal issue with the BAE Hawk on the cover because it has some great close-ups and you need them since the instructions are a little vague on this part.

 

 

Construction



The fuselage went together very well and aside some minor sanding it needed no putty whatsoever.

The only minor issues that I had were the following:

  1. The wing comes in three pieces, one big bottom piece and two top pieces. The fit from top to bottom is fine. I elected to thin down the trailing edges. The problem is that there is a good gap between the fuselage and the top surface of the wings. I solved it by inserting styrene strips in the gap, sanding them flush with the top wing surface and the fuselage and then used my favorite 3M Acryl Blue automotive putty. After a couple of passes with Mr. Surfacer in the airbrush everything was fine.

  2. The other "issue" was the lack of any type of wall separating the front and back cockpit areas. This was easy to fix with a some styrene sheet and some rod and wire.

  3. It would have been nice to have some HUD representation included in the photoetch fret. I used my Reheat stock for details.

  4. The little exhaust hole on the top of the fuselage hump was also not present. Easy to fix, you might want to insert some hollow rod in there for effect.

  5. One thing that bothered me a bit and did nothing about was the lack of vortex generators on the wings. I decided that it would be too messy to start gluing so many styrene pieces in such close proximity to one another.

 

 

Conclusion

 

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It was relatively simple and as close to a "fast build out of the box" as it comes for me. It took only a couple of weeks of late evening work to complete.

 

 

LF has also done the Mig-19S for Collect-Aire and the upcoming Su-24 and Mig-31. Can't wait!

 

 

Additional Images

 

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Article Copyright © 2001 by Fotios Rouch
Page Created 27 December 2001
Last updated 04 June 2007

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