May 31, 2009

Revell-Germany's 1/144 C-17A "Globemaster III" ~ In Box Preview by Dasphule

Well gang, Revell has done it again! There must be something in the water in Germany lately; those guys are pumping out the styrene goodness left and right! Their latest plastic gem is the long awaited C-17A Globemaster III. I put off buying my copy until it got the point that everyone was sold out of them, but again my girl Jen at House of Hobbies found one for me. Jen, tons of love to ya darlin!

Scaled out at 1/144th scale, the kit is MUCH bigger than you expect a 1/144th kit to be, and Revell’s designers didn’t pull any punches when detailing her inside and out. 124 parts and with 13 of them in clear grace the tightly packed box interior. Beautiful engraved panel lines and raised reinforcement bands grace the whole exterior of the aircraft, none of them overdone and in scale to my eyes. Detail is as sharp as can be expected on the interior parts for the scale. I’m not sure an aftermarket set is in the works for this one, but it has unlimited possibilities for load outs. I’m currently looking for some 1/144th Hummers for mine, possibly some figures, too. The cockpit is minimal with an all in one piece layout. The rear wall, the seats, all of it is one piece, but the view into the cockpit will be next to nil once it’s built up, so the suggestion of these details is all that’s needed.
 

Box Art

You’re given three choices as to how the model can be built. All sealed up, gear down, or gear down with rear and side doors open. Mine will definitely opened up! The interior wall and floor detail must be shown off as it’s beautifully molded. The walls and floor are molded as separate pieces from the fuselage and look like they’ll just fall right in during assembly.

The complex landing gear is made up of no less than 26 pieces. I’m amazed that they captured the insane way that the gear goes together so well. It looks to me like this will be the most challenging part of the build, but I’ve been surprised by Revell’s engineering before; it may be a cake walk. Tom and I took TONS of pictures of the gear of this beast at the MacDill Open House, so if you’re building one, check out the reference section of the main site.

The instructions have you building the interior shell and adding to it the landing gear and various clear bits. Once you’re done with this, it all fits into the outer fuselage halves. Interesting, and novel, approach IMO. Next it’s on to wing assembly and installation, as well as gear doors. Some of the gear doors will have to be cut in half if you do the kit gear down, but the cut lines are clearly marked with engraved lines.

What You Get

Clear parts.	Engines parts.	Inside halves.	Interior parts.	Outside halves.	Instructions cover.	Decals	Instructions sample.

Next up are the engines. They look decent enough, keeping in mind that individual fan blades in this scale would be nigh impossible to replicate in styrene. This is one of the places on this kit that I think an aftermarket PE company could do us all a favor. Some PE fan blades would just make this kit jump off the table as the blades are one of the first things you notice when you walk up to the real thing. Even a slight breeze makes them turn when it’s sitting idle on the flight line, which causes them to make that weird scraping noise that forces you to look up at them.

Glue the engines to the wings, build and add the very nicely detailed front and rear door steps and you’re ready for paint. Not much to say here, I’m pretty sure all C-17s are overall FS 26173. The kit supplies 2 different decal schemes, one is ship number 96-0006 “The Spirit of Berlin” of the 437th Airlift Wing based out of Charleston AFB circa 2008, the other is ship number 99-0063 “The Spirit of the Wright Brothers” of the 62nd Airlift Wing based out of McChord AFB. I’ll be buying the aftermarket decal sheet from XtraDecal so I can build it up as the plane we saw at MacDill’s open house this year.

While I’d much preferred a BIG 1/72nd kit of this beautiful plane, this 1/144th offering is a very well done and sized representation. After seeing them fly over my house every day, I had to have one of my own and Revell didn’t disappoint me. They’re so ominous when they fly over, so quiet compared to other big planes coming out of MacDill. I’m always amazed to see these big, chunky aircraft banking sharply and staying in the air. If you’re a fan of big jets as I am, hunt one of these kits down, you won’t be disappointed.