75 years since the opening stages of the BoB and the retrieval of a Dornier 17 wreck south of the English coast – what else do you need to bring out a brand-new kit of the said aircraft?
Well, definitely a management willing to rejuvenate an established, but aged brand.
Let´s have a look at the results …
(Für die deutsche Version bitte hier klicken)
A total of 170 (!) parts in light-grey styrene on 4 sprues will be found inside the lid-and-tray box we modellers do love so much because of it´s storage possibilities.
Although the engraving is still a little bit on the heavy side most of it will be levelled once the kit is painted and those among us who prefer the brush-painting will be happy to get deeper panel lines!
The details are really excellent:
Even a crew of four Luftwaffe-guys are inside the box – Airfix seems to listen to us modellers!
The engines are ok but there is always room for refinement – isn´t it?
The props are cast as single units – easy to assemble:
A plus for further ease of assembly are both fuselage-to-wing spars as seen below the props.
The wheel wells do feature a lot of prominent ejectorpin marks – the undercarriage itself on the other side is more than perfect: detailed and yet sturdy once assembled!
The main tires are flattened out-of-the-box and the wheel-well roofs inside the lower wing halves do feature some structural detail:
Even the bomb-cell in the upper wing halves did get some attention as well:
A complete bomb-load of different sizes is there:
Looking at the upper wing halve reveals the possibility to build your Dornier with dropped flaps – for which the flaps themselves are inside the box:
The transparent parts are separately packaged:
The are all very thick (which is a bonus once you try to glue them onto the fuselage!) but also extremely transparent – maybe a dip into “Future/Klear” wll enhance the transparency further!
The decals do allow us modellers to build …
… one Luftwaffe and one croatian Dornier:
The instruction manual is one of the best we have seen up until now:
Especially the very thoughtful addition of these red „in situ“ drawings are worth the mention – not even an absolute beginner will be able to make something wrong!
My conclusion: Wow! Long overdue we finally did get a 21st century kit of this Luftwaffe workhorse from the BoB and with a pricetag that we can only call „userfriendly“.
Go out, buy one and build it for the sheer fun!