Kinetic’s all-new tool T-45 Goshawk’s light gray styrene features engraved surface detail (except for some raised rivets on the aft fuselage), but I found the engraving somewhat inconsistent. On the main wings and horizontal stabs, the engraving was extremely fine, consistent with a new tool kit. But on the fuselage, engraving was much wider and deeper in places — not at all like the wings.
The builder has a few options: canopy open or closed, flaps dropped, speed brakes open or closed, nose-gear strut compressed, and landing gear up or down. However, if you choose to build the model with the gear up, you’ll have to devise a stand (none included). The kit can be assembled as either a T-45A or T-45C; Kinetic has provided different instrument panels for each.
The decals, drawn by Twobobs and printed by Cartograf, are in perfect register and include markings for either a Navy or Marine T-45.
I liked the size of the instruction booklet. It’s a big improvement over the small, hard-to-read sheet included in some of Kinetic’s earlier kit releases. I deviated from the instructions and assembled the nicely detailed multipiece ejection seats, then assembled and painted the cockpit and nose-gear bay.
Kinetic has molded full-length intake and exhaust ducts. Each side of the exhaust duct had a huge ejector-pin stub on the inside surface, which was somewhat problematic to remove and clean up in such a narrow space. The intake ducting, too, was marred by a large ejector-pin mark on each side on the inside, though not as difficult to clean up. With the cockpit painting and duct work done, I closed up the fuselage halves.
The instructions say to include nose weight, but not how much — and there isn’t any room in the nose to place it, anyway. I ended up putting two No. 4 sinkers behind the pilot’s instrument panel.
Attaching the wing, I found small gaps at both the front and back that needed some putty. The intakes also had ejector-pin holes that needed filling, and the intakes’ mating surfaces needed some filing to fit without filler.
The two antennas for the top and bottom of the nose were hard to remove from the sprue; once they were off, they had prominent square attachments and did not look right at all. So, I made two new antennas from strip styrene.
The instructions failed to list a part number for the rear fuselage blanking plate, although two (parts B-26 and B-27) are included.
I used Tamiya TS-26 pure white spray-can paint, decanted into my airbrush. For the orange, I custom-mixed Tamiya yellow and red acrylics to match the photos shown on the back of the box.
The decals went on pretty well; they are quite thin and delicate, and I needed a little bit of water on the model to move them around for final placement. I did use some Mr. Mark Softer to get them to conform to the raised rivets on the rear fuselage and wing vortex generators.
With all the major construction and painting completed, it was time to mount the landing gear and gear doors. Kinetic molded the tires in two pieces with separate wheel hubs, which makes painting a breeze — no tire to mask. I found another error in the instructions — they show the main landing gear mounting point in the middle of the bay, where the retraction strut should be mounted instead — but it was pretty easy to figure out.
Overall, I found the Kinetic T-45 Goshawk was a fairly easy build; about 20 hours for me. Nice details, simple construction, and great decals made for an enjoyable build. My only complaint was those pesky ejection pins in the exhaust and intake ducting.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the April 2013 FineScale Modeler.