ESCI 1/72 F-5/RF-5 "SKOSHI" TIGER

Reviewer: Myself  (braithy@bigpond.com)

The Freedom Fighter was developed as a light-weight and easily maintained supersonic aircraft, suitable for supply to friendly nations under the USA Military Assistance Programme of the late 50's, early 60's.  Only a few were bought by USAF, for limited service in Vietnam, but many were sold to other countries where the aircraft was used in close support and light attack roles.  Countries supplied included Canada, Greece, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Phillipines, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuala in varying version types.  Because of its handling and performance characteristics it was a favourite with pilots and this combined with minimal maintenance and airfield requirements, has seen the aircraft still in service at least with lesser developed nations today.

In the familiar, if oversized, red box of Esci this kit was loosely floating within - mind you I did pick this kit up secondhand recently.  There are three sprues inside, two in an Earth colour containing the bulk of the parts - perhaps parts common to all F-5A/B kits, while one is a lighter tan colour containing the noses and refuelling probes.  There are about 90 injection mold parts with nice detail and enscribed panel lines and about half a dozen clear parts on one sprue.  Instructions are on a large fold out strip with more than a dozen straightforward assembly steps with small diagrams also prevalent, for example, wing angle, stores options, cockpit profile and undercarriage positioning.  Paint numbers are provided in Humbrol - the old range.

Principally there are three versions that this kit says it can reproduce, an F-5C, an SRF-5A or a CF-5R.  To be honest, one can actually reproduce any of the related variants including the CF-5A, F-5A and RF-5C - all variants of the famed 'Freedom Fighter' family.  The kit contains options for all of these and correctly provides specific modifications for each version.  The instructions clearly point out where a part is optional depending on choice of the version being built (By using A=USA, B=Spain and C=Canada as the point outs).

Construction starts with a rather nicely detailed cockpit that includes a very nicely and accurately molded two-piece injection seat with a decal supplied as the seat harness.  The instructions point out a number of different colours to use just on the seat (rather than the standard dark green and red headrest) so immediately you feel like you are onto a quality kit.  The seat is then placed into a cockpit tub that comes with side panels and rudder pedals already molded.  Decals are supplied for the main instrument panel and the side consoles.  A control column is also provided while throttles are molded onto the side panel.  Unfortunately, the decals easily disintegrated due to their age and were best handled with minimal time 'soaking'.  I managed to keep the instrumentation decals in tact but the seat harness fell to bits and I was in a position to have to paint it on.

The fuselage comes in a number of separate pieces.  The rear section stretching from just behing the cockpit to the tail is split vertically but also requires you to affix the belly section.  The tailfin overlaps, being more or less half on each side, but my piece was terribly warped near the tip and could not be fully rescued.  I am hoping people don't look at the kit from front-on because there is a noticeable slant near the tip.  Fit of these parts was quite good but you need to carefully position the belly section because it is easy to have it off centre.  If doing version C, like I was, one has to be wary that holes have to be poked into the belly section to house some ducts.  These have quite large connector pins, so they could be sliced off without the need to drill holes into the plastic and could simply be placed on the belly, which is what I did.

The cockpit fuselage section goes together nicely and again if doing the C version remember to cut the section as instructed in order to place the belly fuselage tank later in the process.  If one follows the exact lines to make the hole, it will actually be too big for the tank connector pin.  The nose area is essentially two-piece, one being the actual nosecone and the other being the area between cone and cockpit where the machine guns are housed in the top forward fuselage.  You are also provided with two nosecones, depending on the version you are building, the slender F-5 or the reconnaissance RF-5 type noses.  Doing the CF-5 I used the slender nosecone.

The noseprobe has no connector pin for the nose and must be butt-joined.  It also has a smaller area to attach to the nose than the cone allows which means that it is very easy to get off-centre.  I used fast setting superglue to overcome this and left the probe on the nose cone to dry overnight.  Finally, be careful when aligning the cockpit section, gun nose section and nosecone section together, they are easy to misalign due to their eliptical shape and one needs to be attentive.  The two fuselage sections then go together very nicely.

Next comes the wings, tailplane and intake sections.  The Intakes are not 100% correctly aligned when fitted to the model.  The wings provide positionable leading edge flaps and everything fits as it should.  A small diagram showing positioning of the components here helps the modeller to achieve the right angles.  On the belly of the aircraft there is option for open or closed air brakes, complete with actuating struts.

If you are looking to do a wheels up model then this is not the model for you.  The kit is only 'geared' toward lowered undercarriage.  The nose door section contains a cut out section where the wheel well can be seen through, the main gear doors are far too thick to be able to cover the wells in the wing section (the fuselage section is fine) and therefore requires major filing, but also has a small scoop at the rear which occurs when the doors are open.  So bottom line is that it caters for the wheels-down modeller very well in this scale. Small diagrams adorn the instruction sheet showing correct positioning of all the components and the undercarriage is nicely rendered, and to scale.  Wheel well detail is reasonable but needs a bit more to enhance it up.

Stores options come in the form of optional wingtip tanks or sidewinders, and underwing Mk.83 bombs and tanks.  Two different refuelling probes are provided, depending on the version you are building, and mine being the Canadian choice invoked the version that jutts up and out in front of and just beside the cockpit.  The fuselage doesn't really give you any guidance to place the probes so use the diagrams on the instruction sheet for correct placement.

The kit allows for four versions to be built, an early USAF F-5C example in two-tone olive and tan upper surfaces with light aircraft grey undersurfaces, type being 4441 st.CCTS.  Second is a Spanish SRF-5A reconniassance version of ALA 21 ESC 211, with an upper Olive, Sand and Tan finish and light grey undersurfaces, and finally a Canadian CF-5A fighter or CF-5R reconnaissance version of 434th Squadron in upper USN Green and Sea Grey camouflage and undersides light grey.  The version I chose was a CF-5A and used Humbrol 117 Light US Green and 27 Sea Grey with Light Aircraft Grey undersides.

Because the kit is rather old, the decals were very aged and very fragile, they disintegrated, but for the record the kit supplies stencilling and insignia for the above versions to be reproduced.  I was in the unhappy position of having to ditch these decals because they were so brittle but used some of the stencilling (the smaller ones were usable) then applied the rest of the decals, including Canadian insignia from my overflowing spares box.  There are a few aftermarket decal sets available that one can use for this kit.

Accuracy wise the kit portrays the F-5 exceptionally well.  I had a few gripes with some of placement of parts as touched on in the review, and the warped fin tip but overall this kit can not be faulted.  It is an excellent replication of the F-5, allows one to build just about any Freedom Fighter version from its parts, including - subject to availability of decal sheets - all the other various air force examples as touched on the very first paragraph above.  Fit is generally excellent and the kit is very highly recommended to all modelling skills.

Related Reviews:  Italeri 1/48 F-5A Freedom Fighter  

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Northrop Freedom Fighter, appears to be an F-5A variant