Italeri 1/72 Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk

ITALERI 1:72 LOCKHEED F-117A NIGHTHAWK

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: February 2003

Kit Details:

Italeri No.189 1/72 F-117A Stealth Nighthawk

Aircraft History:

The F-117A is the result of a long and secret Lockheed "Skunkworks" project dating back to the early 1970's, to be for all intents and purposes invisible to radar. It was first exposed to the combat arena in the Gulf War where it performed under the cloud of darkness and all types of weather and was spoken of to be a deadly accurate fighter bomber.

The Kit:

A summarised version of the information written in my previous Inbox review on this kit is as follows: Two sprues (not bagged) contain just 28 parts in black flash free, injection molded plastic, with raised detail and etched control surfaces. On opening the box you wonder how quick the project will be as the aircraft body is essentially two piece, containing fuselage, nose, wings and pitot tubes already molded. There are two clear parts, one for canopy and the other for the nose mounted radar section.

Options:

The main optional component of this kit is an open or closed bomb bay. Stores included for the bomb bay are a pair of free fall bombs, or laser guided bombs.

Instructions:

The usual Italeri type of fold out sheet quoting Modelmaster paint ranges referred to by letter symbols for various components on the kit during construction. History, sprue diagram and small profile sketches are also included. There are seven straight forward and well detailed assembly steps to adhere to. This sheet is smaller than their other kits, being six A5 type of pages in length. The four view diagram for decal placement is spread across the first (top & bottom views underneath brief history) and last (sideviews) pages. The bottom of the box features artwork for painting information.

Construction:

Construction of this kit appears very simple - install the cockpit, join the fuselage halves, add on the tail fins, undercarriage, and canopy, and fit out (or close up) the bomb bay and your done! No wings to attach, no pitot tubes to affix, the kit looks just about fully complete, which is obviously related to the mold limitations of getting such a unique shape. But having previously put together a similarly easy looking YF-23 from this company that was anything but a weekend build, I was sceptical this one would be any quicker! But you can be pleasantly surprised!

The cockpit tub is quite basic with only the main instrument panel featuring any detail. This can be drybrushed and the detail picked out which looks quite good, with a tiny bit of silver and dark green for the screens looking the part. The instructions say to paint the interior gull grey, which was close enough for me. The seat comes in three parts and is quite well done, with detail molded onto the side of the seat as well as harnesses. A control column also fits into the tub and then this is installed into the top fuselage half and fits well. At the same time, the intake screens can be added, installed from inside the fuselage. These screens are not see through to any intake trunking and are fully molded plastic parts. These were painted in polished steel and looked the part.

I overlooked the instructions directions to affix the fuselage halves next by deciding to add the tail fins and fix up the undercarriage and bomb bays. The tail fins fit well and are molded to dry at the correct angle, but make sure you line it up properly on the rear fuselage first. The gear doors, including bomb bay doors, are molded as one piece and all fit well in the closed position. The parts themselves along with the instructions are clear in telling you where to slice the doors for an open wheel/bomb bay. The bomb bay has some structural and plumbing detail and doesn't look too bad, although I am not sure how accurate it is portrayed. The kit provides a pair of GBU-10 Laser Guided and a pair of another unknown bomb type and you can choose one of these pairs (or perhaps a combination of both?) to install in the bomb bay on simple pylons. The pictures I have of weapons being loaded into an F-117A bomb bay clearly indicate that a trapeze is used both to sling the bomb into the bomb bay and to lower it down to release into the airstream. The bay doors are also inaccurate as they are hinged from a centreline point, suggesting there are two bays side by side (see the photo included in the Inbox review), whereas the kit has one big bay with the doors hinged from the outside. The only real way around this is to glue the doors back to back where they meet at the bay and sit them over the middle of the bay. Otherwise have a closed bay.

The fuselage halves can then go together. These do fit very well but the trick is to line them up absolutely perfectly, otherwise you will have little gaps everywhere, and a noticeably misaligned join. The fuselage halves also like to prize apart a little while drying, so use plenty of wooden pegs and masking tape to keep the halves together while drying.

The final two things to add to the kit are the main one-piece canopy, with jacks provided to have it in the open position, and a clear part in front the prominent radar ball just forward of the cockpit. This is not glass on the real thing, there is actually a very fine mesh, but I guess considering moulding limitations, other than very fine etched metal, I can't think of any other way to depict this other than a glass panel or leaving it completely open. I used the clear part as directed. Both clear parts fit very well.

In painting the aircraft it doesn't get much simpler than this - all-over matt black! Since the plastic was black, I simply just threw one coat of matt black over the top of it, and left a couple of small areas unpainted where it was hard to get to, and you cannot tell the difference! Of course the plastic itself has a semi gloss like appearance, so that can be seen. The bomb bay was a bitch to paint though, needing several (and I mean several!) coats of white before it looked white! Primer was used as a basis to neutralise the black though, and I think this saved a couple of coats of white in the long run. An anti-collision light on the upper port fuselage was painted, but you had to hand paint the navigation lights on the wings, as these are not included on the plastic. The exhaust area was hard to produce, photos show it having an aluminium like look with black streaks from the engine. I ended up painting it aluminium then dry brushing streaks of black, and I think this had the desired effect. Hand painting the canopy was a bit tricky, only because of the sharp triangles as radar reducing effects are included. Overall a pretty simple kit to put together, and probably one of the quickest constructions you can really get - especially considering the YF-23 took ages to put together because few parts fitted well.

Colour Schemes:

The kit supposedly provides for two versions, one on the bottom of the box in colourful artwork (4 450th Test Group, USAF, Tenopah, 1989) and the other on the instruction sheet (37th TFW, Tenopah, 1990). It's hard to tell from the information I have just whether the kit in fact (see decals below) cater for both versions or not.

Decals:

Very small decal sheet comprising of the ghost grey coloured roundels, insignia and unit badges which appear to be for the 37th TFW example only, although two serials are provided, so one might want to investigate. I query whether one fin has 416 and the other has 415 as the unit identifiers as stated in the kit, so one should check their reference material (which unfortunately I lack on this example). The decals themselves were the poorest Italeri decals I have used for quite some time. They are printed nicely but are very thin and seemingly disintegrate at the touch, and must be placed in the right position the first time you put it on the model (if you succeed in getting a whole decal down!). I used some leftovers from the YF-23 kit and others from the spares box as the ones supplied in the kit were useless. Both water application and setting solution were tried with neither having any real effect. So I would recommend replacing.

Accuracy:

The kit in my opinion, was obviously produced at a time when some aspects of the real aircraft were still classified or not yet detectable on photos etc. In the main, I think Italeri have done pretty well in getting the shape and profile looking as convincing as it does. However, there are several flaws which detract from the accuracy, some of which are pretty obvious. The centreline hinged bomb bay door is one, as is the bulged ball area for the FLIR in the nose. This doesn't look too bad really, but in reality I am not sure what the engineers were trying to copy since it matches nothing in any photos of any F-117's I have. The exhaust depiction is not accurate, with a more squarer box like formation needed, some of the panel line and anti-radar cross section panelling is wrong, particularly around the canopy. The tail fins are angled too far out and the clear panel over the FLIR, not only is inaccurate (since it should be a mesh) but now having finished the model, it does look inaccurate too. I'm sure there are some other perhaps minor flaws of which I have spoken about during the construction phase (eg: trapeze bomb loading mechanism), but that is enough to give you an idea, that overall it is a bit poor in this area. However, as stated above, the overall profile looks pretty good.

Overall Recommendation:

With a much more accurate Hasegawa kit on the market that is equal in ease of build (from what I hear), plus Italeri's having several flaws in the accuracy stakes, a disappointing and perhaps also inaccurate decal sheet, I cannot really recommend this kit as the first choice in modelling the F-117. On the plus side, if you are not one who cares too much about accuracy, and like a very simple, quick and good for value build with one of the easiest paint jobs ever.... then you won't be too disappointed with the Italeri kit, since the fit was an indeed high point of this kit.

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