The F-117 Nighthawk was a star of Desert Storm, famous for penetrating Baghdad’s heavily-defended airspace and taking out its assigned targets.
The kit comes molded in medium gray plastic on 10 sprues plus the top and bottom fuselage halves, each of which is molded in one piece. You get one sprue of clear parts and two sprues of bombs and rockets. You’ll only use the 2,000-pound GBUs, though.
The rockets, which appear to be a Harpoon and a Shrike, aren’t used (why they included them, I don’t know). You get a choice of metal or plastic landing gear with vinyl tires, and you can use plastic or photoetched-metal screening for the engine intakes. I chose the latter, but be careful — it would be easy to stick a finger through one or both while handling the model.
Among the options in the kit is a posable canopy. Bomb bays can be displayed open with the two 2,000-pound bombs or closed, at which point you won’t have to worry about building the bays. They give you a refueling receptacle that can be posed open, but I chose to keep it closed. Why ruin the beautiful lines of the model?
Construction starts with the cockpit. It’s nicely detailed with side consoles, sidewalls, and seat. The instrument panel is molded in relief, and decals are provided for the instruments. I saved time by painting the instruments, giving them a wash and a quick dry-brushing. The decals would be nice if you wanted to take the time to get them to settle onto the raised moldings of the instruments.
Step 3 builds the bomb bays with extended bomb racks. This area is fairly detailed and goes together well. Steps 2, 4, and 5 are for the landing gear. I just glued the bays to the bottom fuselage half and left the struts off until final assembly.
Step 7 pertains to the engines. All you need to do is assemble the basic engine components to ensure the exhaust and intake ducting get properly located. You won’t see the engine anyway.
Steps 11 and 14 assemble the FLIR balls and their compartments. There are no instructions on what colors should be used, but I figured they were flat black like everything else.
When joining the top and bottom fuselage halves (Step 16), it’s best to install the control surfaces first.
Steps 19 and 20 cover the left and right empennages. There are movable parts here, but their fit is loose and sloppy; I just glued everything tight.
Attaching the landing gear doors in Step 23, the instructions are vague about where Part C40 connects in the wheel bay. I just installed it straight up and down.
Painting was easy: gloss white and flat black. I used scale flat black — very dark gray — with straight black pastels to vary the monochromatic look.
Decals went on without any problems over a gloss coat of Pledge Future floor polish. A final flat coat and installation of the canopy, landing gear, doors, and antennas finished the job.
It took me only 17 hours to build this Nighthawk. Still, the model’s size and some of the problem-solving necessary might make this one for modelers with a few kits behind them. But if you have built a few kits and have never tackled a big 1/32 scale aircraft, this is a good place to start.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the October 2012 FineScale Modeler.