ACADEMY 1:72 SUPER ETENDARD
Reviewer: Myself (braithy@bigpond.com)
In the early 70's the French Navy needed to replace its obsolescent Etendard carrierborne aircraft, and were seriously considering the Jaguar. But Dassault-Breguet and its supporters put pressure on the project favouring a much improved version of the Etendard, also being supersonic. The Super Etendard features were proved in three Etendard conversions and the prototype (per se) first flew in October 1975, revealing much improved performance and operational capability without sacrificing the carrier compatibility. The French purchased 71 of these aircraft to March 1983 and another 14 were bought by Argentina. Some French examples were diverted to Iraq for the Gulf War against Iran and proved themselves important weapons in that conflict. They also featured in the Falklands War where two ships were sunk by Exocet Air-to-Surface missiles launched by Argentinian Super Etendards.
Nice box artwork with the aircraft taking off a carrier and inside you will find nicely detailed crisp quality parts in medium grey colour and packed in two bags of cellophane. There's about 54 parts plus 4 clear that includes two-piece canopy with a choice of two main bits depending if you want to depict the model with an open or closed cockpit. The parts feature nice detail and finely engraved panel lines although ejector pin marks are evident on missiles and undercarriage. The instructions are simply one A4 sized sheet with assembly steps and colour call outs. These are done only for the external scheme - ie: no colour recommendation for individual parts, and only a universal colour name is suggested as no paint ranges are cited to assist one later.
This tooling is just on 10 years old now and is certainly very good for its time. Although it suffers the same problems that many of these era-like kits have and that is minimal internal detail. However, it does come with tub, pedals, stick, seat, side panels and main instrument panel so is far from sparse but there is no console raised detail or decals for any of the panels. In the absence of recommendation for colouring the interior I simply gave it a dark grey wash.
The fuselage halves went together with complete ease but the cockpit tub needed to be trimmed slightly first - and don't forget a little bit of nose weight. The whole underbelly section is actually separate that houses part of the main gear bays, speedbrakes and arrestor hook. The speedbrakes are positionable and an acctuating strut is provided if you want them open. The arrestor hook can also be positioned down but exquisite positioning and careful attachment will be needed to have it down. I left it in the up position forecasting that I would have a wheels-up model and painted the hook itself red, I found the arrestor hook just a slight too small for its allocated space. The intakes were then attached to the side of the fuselage and went on very nicely although the plates were just a tiny bit out of alignment. A very small amount of filler was needed to hide any gaps between casing and fuselage.
The wings proved to be a bit of a problem. They are both two-piece split horizontally and the lower portion contains interior 'walls' that house the undercarriage section. These are overdone because attaching upper and lower wing halves will not result in a flush fit, and if you do force one then a noticeable rounded bulge (warp effect) is evident in the wing. The only way around this is to file down the walls so the wing-halves attach perfectly. This is easily done, so long as you don't overdo it yourself - use pegs to keep the wing halves nicely sitting together. I then attached the missile railings and found one to be badly warped. You are supplied with two underwing pylons allowing attachment of two Matra Magic 550 AAMs, 1 AM-39 Exocet ASM - the type used by Argentina in the Falklands war and two external fuel tanks. I chose to attach the AAMs, one tank on the starboard wing and the Exocet on the port wing. There are no colour guides for the missiles so I used reference photos to paint orange Matras, white Excoet with dark grey tip and upper blue-grey/ lower white tank with a red tip. Wings, underbelly section and fuselage were all painted prior to joining. The wings go nicely against the fuselage but require a minor amount of filler around the wing joints which had to be accounted for before completely painting. The join lines do need a little bit of sanding to smooth out but were otherwise quite unobtrusive.
While I did mine in wheels up mode I did look at the undercarriage and test these out for fit. They are very nicely done and match up well with reference photos - aside from a few imperfection mold marks pointed out above. A few small aerials and tubes are provided in the kit, including the underbelly exhaust ducts to enhance the model. The pre-fixed tacan aerial is too short and fat but the rest are fairly spot on. I managed to lose one of the pair of small ducts so had to use some stretched sprue and replace. The twin static/pitot tubes either side under the nose are hard to find exact positioning on in the instructions. Fortunately if one looks very carefully at the plastic you can see small ovals to indicate their respective positions - since the back of them is attached to the sprue these needed to be carefully sanded to sit properly.
The kit allows two versions to be reproduced - an Argentine version similar to that used in Falklands war and a French Naval version that I chose both in upper blue-grey and lower white scheme. As mentioned no recommended paint range is quoted so only general colour names are provided. I received a fair bit of different advice through rms about which colour most closely resembles match - this ranged from Intermediate blue to Ocean Grey, Dark Grey and Navy Blue. Photos are hard to match colour and in one sideview artwork they have quite clearly chosen Intermediate Blue. I ended up using Humbrol Navy Blue (77) upper and lower white and this has turned out quite well and after application of decals with a gloss coat looks perfect. Humbrol have a Matt Blue-Grey paint (79) but this just didn't look right when tested on scrap sprue. There is of course nothing stopping you from choosing the two tone blue-grey and Intermediate Blue wrap around camouflage version that is also seen on current French Super Etendards. The white underside proved to be the most annoying part because it required several coats before it even looked white, despite using primer first which is only light grey. Perhaps all manufacturers should mold plastic in white so we don't have this problem anymore?!
The decal sheet has a lot of white markings, perhaps they should have used yellow backing paper so you could see them. They are, of course, invisible on the white background and provided much annoyance when trying to separate one decal from another. But that was where the problems stopped. The decals themselves have an excellent register and were very happy to sit where you wanted them. Just one recommendation, with decal #22 (an X in a box that covers the small upper fuselage inlets) make sure you trim the carrier film so it fits perfectly. Otherwise, decals are very good quality.
Accuracy is very good and includes the nozzles, ducts and openings as found on the real aircraft. I have a photo of this exact French aircraft taking off from a carrier and note a couple of indiscretions by the kit. Firstly the leading edges of the wings and fin have a very fine black lining. The leading tip of the fin has a small white strip that goes 'around the corner' of the tip, as it were. A very tiny duct is missing from the port nose just in front of the cockpit, but other than that there are no complaints.
This a highly recommended kit - quite accurate and my finished little gem looks to be an absolute replica of the real thing. The kit was generally hassle free and would suit all modelling skills. I'd be very surprised if there is a better kit out there in this scale.
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Argentinian Super Etendard very similar in markings to one produced in this kit