Aires

1/48 Cockpit For the Hasegawa Draken J35FS

Stock Number: 4375

Reviewed By  Chip Jean, IPMS# 13823

MSRP: $23.49 Web Site: www.aires.cz Some of you guys automatically buy a resin cockpit for a new kit. If that's you, let me save you some time scanning the review and tell you that a quick internet search showed this set being available at Sprue Brothers for $20.99, Great Models for $21.15, and Hannants for $14.38 (but watch those shipping charges from the UK). As usual though, I urge you to try your local hobby shop first. For those of you who are like me and base your decision to buy a resin cockpit by (1) how much better it is than the kit cockpit, (2) how much it costs, and (3) how much surgery is involved, this review is for you. So first, an inventory of what Aires puts in its blister pack, then a comparison between the Hasegawa and the Aires cockpits, and finally a summary of surgery and construction. What You Get The Aires blister pack contains a mix of resin, photo-etch, and acetate film. Resin parts include a cockpit tub with the left and right consoles, right sidewall, control stick, and throttle levers all molded in place; a left sidewall; an ejection seat; a cockpit coaming with the base of the instrument panel molded underneath; an extra control stick in case you break the one molded onto the tub; and finally, a mount for the rudder pedals. The photo-etch fret contains parts for the rather complex seat harness, instrument panel faces, rudder pedals, mirrors, and a few other random seat parts. The acetate sheet is the meat for the instrument panel sandwich with instrument face detail. The small, two sided instruction sheet is a bit of a let down. It contains no color information so you're either on your own to do research or use the Hasegawa instructions. There is a diagram on how all those photo-etch seat harness pieces go together, but it's not very clear. You'll spend time flipping the sheet back and forth looking at the exploded view and the drawing of the completed seat. As for installing the cockpit in the kit, you only get a warning that some surgery to kit parts may be required; not where and how much, but more on that later. A word of warning on the packaging; the parts rattle freely around the blister pack. As a result, the charging handles on my ejection seat were both broken off. Fortunately, they were clean breaks and easily fixed. If you're lucky enough to purchase this set at a local hobby shop instead of mail order, give it a good look-over first. Comparisons of Kit & Aires Parts (see pics 1-7)

Cockpit Tub: The kit tub has left and right consoles and a right sidewall. Aires sees all that and raises it with a separately molded left sidewall. In my opinion, the Aires control stick and throttle quadrant are far superior to Hasegawa's. Where Aires' tub really outdoes the kit tub is the rear bulkhead. Hasegawa gives you a flat piece of plastic while Aires has molded in seat rails, wiring and plumbing. Unfortunately, most of that nice detail will be blocked by the ejection seat. In Hasegawa's defense, something resembling rails are molded onto their seat, but their bulkhead is totally blank. The only area where Hasegawa is better than Aires is the crispness of the molded-on switches and buttons. That's not to say Aires is bad, just in that area, Hasegawa is slightly better. ADVANTAGE: Aires

Seat: This is an area where, in my opinion, Hasegawa almost always falls a bit short. The kit seat is made up of 3 parts with no harness detail. The Aires resin seat contains more crisply molded detail, including full detail on the back of the seat, even though it will not be visible when the seat is in place. Add to that a photo-etch harness made up of almost a dozen pieces. Even if you were to add an aftermarket harness to the kit seat, there's no comparison. BIG ADVANTAGE: Aires Coaming: The kit coaming is molded onto the upper fuselage half and is pretty basic, with some ribbing and other undefined molded-in detail. Aires' has molded in rib detail, a heads-up display, and a center area with some very nice molding that looks like canvas. No doubt, BIG ADVANTAGE: Aires

Instrument Panel: Hasegawa gives you a very nicely molded one-piece instrument panel with nice raised detail and an optional not-so-nice looking decal. The Aires panel is a mixed media affair. The outer wings of the panel are molded onto the cockpit tub and have raised resin detail. The main instrument panel is molded in resin underneath the coaming, with the majority of the instrument dial detail provided by 3 photo-etch & acetate sandwiches. The main radar screen is molded in resin. My usual preference is for raised detail over the PE/acetate sandwich because the PE generally looks too flat. But in this case the resin part onto which you glue the PE/acetate is molded in steps, which adds more life to the PE panel, so I call this one a DRAW. What it Takes to Get it in the Model Painting: Aires gives you no painting instructions so either use the kit instructions or do some research. Hasegawa recommends a cockpit color of FS34079 green with black instruments and a bare aluminum seat. In about 30 minutes of internet research (I hate doing research) I found pictures that back up Hasegawa's color call-outs, but I also found pictures of a gray cockpit with black instruments on a bare aluminum panel. I couldn't tell which Draken version or which country's Air Force had the gray cockpits, so if you're an accuracy freak, use your own discretion. Required Surgery: Additional detail comes at a cost of more than money. You'll have to do some cutting, trimming and sanding to the upper fuselage half and cockpit tub. You might think you can get away without cutting the pour stub off the cockpit tub, but don't be fooled; cut it off. I tried just trimming it, but it wouldn't sit right in the lower fuselage half until I cut it all off. Be careful that you don't cut off the tab molded onto the bottom front of the tub and don't cut away the tab inside the lower fuselage half; they set the forward position of the tub in the bottom fuselage half. There is some ribbing molded onto the upper fuselage half. Sand it off. Cut out the instrument panel coaming from the upper fuselage half. Make sure you just cut off the raised portion. You can trim off more plastic later as you try to fit the Aires coaming up through that opening, but at least you won't have to add filler because you took off too much; like I did. Next, you'll need to do some serious cutting of the rear bulkhead. Hold the Aires bulkhead against the kit bulkhead, mark the shape of the Aires bulkhead against the kit. Now, cut along those lines. When you're done, you'll have an opening in the kit's rear bulkhead that the Aires bulkhead will fit very neatly into. When done, the top of your opening will be approximately 1/32nd of an inch below the bottom of the 3 little canopy notches. Picture 8 shows what your upper fuselage will look like after cutting. Finally, it's time to do some fine trimming so the fuselage halves meet with the Aires cockpit installed. I had to take some material off the sides of the tub, especially towards the front, in addition to fine-tuning the opening in the rear bulkhead. You may need to do a little bit of trimming to the sides of the lower fuselage half too, but do not cut off that raised tab inside the front of lower fuselage half. All this surgery, plus removing all the parts from their pour stubs took me about two hours. Construction and Installation: Except for the seat harness, putting it all together is very simple. Glue the acetate instrument backing to the PE panels and then to the resin panel. Glue the PE rudder pedals to the resin supports then that assembly to the cockpit tub. Attach the left side console to the cockpit tub, then glue the coaming/ instrument panel assembly to the pedestal in the cockpit tub, making sure it's centered and fits through the opening you cut in the upper fuselage. Putting the PE harness onto the seat took me about an hour and a half, but I don't work with photo-etch much, which could account for some of that time. Hint: go slow and look at the diagrams. It does all fit onto the seat…kinda. The final step, which you can save until the entire kit is almost done, is to install the seat, which slides very nicely between the rails (see pics 9-13)

Conclusion: The Aires set is a great improvement over what Hasegawa puts in the box and you can use it without too much surgery to the kit parts. I don't have a series of pics showing a panoramic view of a Draken's cockpit, so I can't say it's 100% accurate, but it matches very closely the pictures I do have, which is enough for me. For those of you who don't want to drop $20+ for the entire cockpit set, the seat along with the photo-etch harness are available separately on-line in the $7.00 range (plus shipping), but again, check your local hobby shop first. Many thanks to Aires for providing this sample.

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