Aires

1/48 A-10 Electronics Bays For the Italeri and Hobby Boss A-10s

Stock Number: 4355 and 4358

Reviewed By  Dennie Adams, IPMS# 34396

MSRP: $16.95 each Web Site: www.aires.cz Aires resin products have become my favorite aftermarket selection of upgrades and corrections. What we have here is a pair of starboard electronics bays with replacement bay doors. The gray resin is perfectly cast with better refined details than the bay in the Italeri kit. Let's talk Italeri first; the newest Hawg from them came along about the same time as the Hobby Boss kit. It was a huge leap forward for Hawg-kind, it even had an open electronics bay that looked really good until now. The replacement Aires piece fits perfectly once you remove the molded in bay. With careful surgery, this took about 20 minutes and the new bay was CA'ed into place with ease. I fitted the Italeri for the Aires cockpit and found no conflict once the block was removed from the back of the resin bay. Now let's discuss the Hobby Boss version. Since my HB Hawg had no molded in bay to remove, this one looked easier. I located the appropriate panel on the fuselage and after taping around the panel with some heavy masking tape to preserve the fuselage in case of a slip of the knife and to use as a scribing guide I cut out the door and attached the new bay with CA, again another 20 minutes. A word of warning on the HB Hawg, mine is a 2-seater so spend a few minute studying the panel layouts and use a reference just to be sure. I almost goofed on the panel selection. The picture shows the Italeri Fuselage on top and the Hobby Boss fuselage below. Both bays were sprayed white for contrast in the picture only. I'll get back to these kits later and detail them out then. My thanks to Aires and IPMS for the review samples and keep up with the great work. Highly recommended.

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