Since the first flight of China’s “fifth generation” fighter was in January 2011, I was surprised to have a model of the J-20 Mighty Dragon so soon.
As with other Trumpeter releases, you’ll find finely engraved panel lines and lots of detail for the cockpit, ejection seat, wheel wells, and landing gear components. Reminiscent of old Matchbox kits, parts are molded in three colors: Those for the main assembly are black; gear and wheel well parts are white; and cockpit pieces have two duplicate sprues of black and blue-gray plastic. (I decided to go with the spirit of things and not paint the white or gray plastic parts whenever possible. ) The decal sheet offers markings for the prototype, but also includes black panels to cover the outside of the white landing gear doors, and aluminum ones for the exhaust. You can almost build it without painting. A fret of photoetched-metal parts and a sprue of clear pieces complete the package.
Fit throughout is excellent, and I breezed through the first several steps of construction, including mounting the nose gear strut — only to knock it off later. Just in case, I added weight in the nose to prevent a “tail sitter.” While very little filler was needed for the seams, I did have some difficulty getting the upper and lower fuselage sections to stay together at the forward edge of the intakes.
Installing the main gear was a challenge. The top of the strut snaps into the rear corner of the wheel wells, but to do so requires lots of sanding and dry-fitting. The “fiddly bits” like gear and door actuators, various sensors, and antenna consumed much of my construction time. I drilled four holes for the sensors around the nose section, since none were provided on the fuselage. Instead of drilling a hole for the pitot tube, I removed the peg from the end of the piece and secured it to the fuselage with white glue.
A separate color guide offers paint choices for Gunze Sangyo products, but the only camouflage scheme is black. The tire black fuselage looks convincing. I did pre-shade several panel lines with gloss black for a little contrast. As seen in photos, weathering was kept to a minimum.
I used the black decals on a couple of the main doors and they matched my painted fuselage. There are decals for the blade antennas and navigation lights. I couldn’t get mine to conform, so I left the antennas blue-gray and painted the lights.
Given the nature of the aircraft, dimensions are best guesses. But the model came close to measurements I found on the Internet. Moreover, it looks right.
I really enjoyed building this kit, and it makes an interesting companion to my F-22. Many of the 25 hours I spent on the model were devoted to fitting small parts. If you’ve built a few kits and are used to tiny pieces, I heartily recommend this kit.