When I got back into plastic modeling after many years, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much information was available online about the hobby. Since I live in a rural area without hobby shops, I have to order most of my model kits online. I began checking out reviews of the kits to help me decide what to buy, only to find that they usually had a lot of information I didn't need and were missing some that I did.
If you are like me, you probably have a prototype in mind when you are shopping for a kit. I don't need a review that goes into long-winded histories of the aircraft. I want to know simple things like whether or not the model has engraved or raised surface detail or any major flaws in accuracy or fit. I also thought it would be helpful to have a list of paints that I could order along with the model since they are not available locally either.
What I came up with was a scoring system that rates various categories from 0 to 5 points. You can quickly scan this list to find what I thought were the strongest and weakest points of the kit, and then scroll down to find brief narratives of my reasoning behind the score. This design, I hope, will make it easy for you to quickly scan the review and get an idea as to whether you want to invest in the model or not. If you decide to build the version I did, I provide a list of the paints and any custom accessories or decals I used to complete the model.
Of course this is all completely subjective. The reviews are simply my impressions of the kits and I do not attempt to compare one kit over against another. I do not always do thorough prototype research so you may occasionally find a bump or a panel line that didn't exist on the prototype that I did not catch. I do this for fun, and I want to share my impressions with other hobbyists who are not absolute purists, but still want to build kits that go together well and look good.
With all that said, I hope you find the reviews helpful. Happy modeling!
Scott
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