Kit: No. 48001
Scale: 1/48
Manufacturer: HiPM, distributed by Condor Models, 3408 S. Harvey Ave., Berwyn, IL 60402, phone 708-484-6815
Price: $36.99
Comments: Injection molded, 119 parts (29 photoetched), decals.
Vought-Sikorsky's first monoplane entered service with the U.S. Navy in 1937. It was the Navy's first monoplane dive bomber, and first production aircraft with foldable wings.
The Vindicator served briefly without effect in World War II, and now only one survives; salvaged from the bottom of Lake Michigan, it is being restored at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida.
"Yellow-wing" fans have long hoped for a Vindicator kit in 1/48, and the Czech HiPM company delivered the first. Most of the plastic parts show average detail, but there is a lot of flash, requiring cleaning, rescribing, and dry-fitting of parts.
What the kit lacks in exterior detail it makes up for inside the cockpit. There is a choice of an injected plastic instrument panel or a photoetched panel with printed-film dials. The cockpit structure, floor, seats, and panels all fit into the fuselage without trouble. Photoetched details enhance the gunner's mount, seats, and panels, as well as provide pushrods for both rows of engine cylinders.
Other options include a short and long cowl scoop, two styles of prop-blade counterbalances, a raised or lowered speed brake, short or extended-span horizontal stabilizers, and provisions to pose the wings folded or extended.
My sample's outer wing sections were 1/8" wider in chord and thicker than the center section, so I worked hard sanding their trailing edges.
Extra sanding also was needed at the rear fuselage and vertical fin, which are too thick. Despite all this, the only filling needed was at the wing fold joint.
There are two bomb cradle parts 44: One is on the radial-shaped sprue with the other small parts, but the other is hiding on the square sprue with the wing center section parts.
The canopy, while sufficiently clear, is thick and fits poorly over both front and rear decks. You'll have to sand the edges, especially around the instrument-panel hood and around the rear-cockpit gun-tub frame.
I painted the late 1930s scheme with Floquil old silver and Testor Model Master enamels. Decals are provided for two yellow-wing examples, and one blue-gray-over-light-gray machine that fought at Midway.
Use great care with the thin, delicate decals. Only blotting with a paper towel is necessary - no setting solution is needed. Use the supplementary set of black wing-stripe decals. Those on the main decal sheet are printed the same; one should be reversed. The four-view-marking drawings show the red landing-aid stripes on both sides of the fin -- they were only on the left. One set is provided on the decals, so don't let the instructions error throw you.
Once finished, the HiPM Vindicator is a beauty. It measures up to scale with the dimensions in Squadron/Signal's SB2U Vindicator in Action.
More than 36 hours were consumed by my SB2U, most of it during cleanup and rescribing. A decent model can be produced from this kit, but this is a project for experienced builders.
Al Jones