There’s a brand-new 1/72 scale F-22 Raptor. That’s not big news; there are a lot of them out there. What is big news is that this is the first all-new aircraft kit from Fujimi in more than a decade!
The kit has a lot of great features, most noticeably the subtly raised and recessed panel detail, allowing you to create that smooth, stealthy skin and achieve a good-looking model. Fujimi’s Raptor comes with a pair of well-detailed engines featuring movable, vectored-exhaust petals and a 35-part engine dolly that even has movable steering. The fuselage halves are molded with the wings, effectively burying assembly joints along the leading and trailing edges, the nose chine, and behind the stabilizers. The fit of the major assemblies was near perfect, with only minor cleanup of the glued seams. Separate sets of gear doors and weapons bay doors are provided for posing the model in flight and buttoned up, or opened to see interior detail. Weapons include a pair each of GPS-guided bombs, AIM-120 AMRAAMs, and AIM-9L and AIM-9X Sidewinders.
The cockpit is comprehensive, with a decal for the raised-detail instrument panel, and a six-part ejection seat – but no harness on the seat. Duplicate sets of clear parts provide your choice of clear or tinted canopies. I applaud Fujimi’s effort to make a realistically hinged and movable canopy, but I couldn’t get mine to work. It’s better to leave the hinge parts out if you want the canopy closed, and the hinge parts fixed if you want it open.
The snaky engine inlets fit well, but their installation is not clearly shown in the too-small instruction diagrams. There were a couple of large ejector-pin marks in the intakes that had to be cleaned up. Installation of the main-gear struts in the separate wells is fiddly. Installing the four-part, nose-gear strut assembly was difficult, as there are five tiny pins that must be inserted in slightly undersized holes that are crowded into the nose-gear well.
A few errors in the instructions can cause confusion. The parts numbers for main-weapons-bay doors C23 and C24 are transposed, as are main-gear-strut covers C1 and C2. The drawings don’t show the angles of the weapons-bay doors when they are posed opened. Also, the forward wheel kingpins for the engine dolly lack numbers in the diagram; they are F17 and F18.
Painting a Raptor is tricky. From some angles, it looks gray; turn your head and it’s silver. No kit manufacturer has yet provided accurate color recommendations (to my eye, anyway), so I tried something different. I painted the entire model with Model Master enamel 36251 aggressor gray, then masked off all the areas that would remain this slightly warm, light gray: radome, canopy frame, intake lips, and flying-surface edges. Then I sprayed the darker camouflage “colors” on the top surfaces with Metalizer titanium. Next, I drew the dark camouflage segments on a manila envelope and cut them out, then suspended them slightly above the surface with bits of sticky putty. I sprayed Metalizer dark anodonic gray for the lighter metallic. I coated the entire model with Metalizer sealer to ready it for decaling. In retrospect, the lighter metallic shade should be darker; next time, I’ll mix the two Metalizer shades to get closer the right look.
The decals are well printed and feature markings for Raptors from Langley, Holloman, and Elmendorf airbases. The decals went down easily on flat areas, but they didn’t like conforming to the few irregular surfaces. Many of the decal grilles and panels were not the same shape as the recesses for which they were intended.
The engines are a tight fit in the fuselage. But they can be removed, and you can pose one on the dolly with little trouble.
The project took 31 hours. Assembly was quick at first, but the installation of the weapons and doors slowed things down. The larger part of the project was painting and decaling. The result is the best F-22 Raptor in 1/72 scale. Welcome back, Fujimi!