Olimp Models

Curtiss P-6E "Hawk"

Kit Number: P72-006

Reviewed by  Stephen Bierce, IPMS# 35922

MSRP: $19.95 olimpmodels.com Fool's Opportunities Thirty years or so ago, my older sister gave me, as a birthday/Christmas gift (my birthday is in the middle of December), the Monogram P-6E Hawk kit, and for a while it was one of my favorites. Yes, even factoring in the pilot figure with the "sucking chest wound"! So when the Olimp kit came along, and since Accurate Miniatures had re-issued the Monogram kit as part of their Air Combat Legends gift set, a head-to-head comparison was possible...and in my case, actually necessary! I received the Olimp kit first. It is a new mold, not a copy of the Monogram kit--but it's clear to me that the designers at Olimp reverse-engineered the Monogram kit and attempted to improve it. And in some ways, it is better. Surface detail is subtler and perhaps more accurate. Cockpit detail has been added, in the form of a dashboard, pilot's seat, cockpit floor, joystick and cockpit walls molded into the fuselage sides. The cockpit wall molding includes a throttle quadrant, a radio box and a trim wheel. (NOTE: Because of the walling, the Monogram pilot won't fit in the Olimp cockpit--the shoulders and elbows of the figure are too wide!) Choice of fully-spatted or partially-spatted wheels. Wings with new details added: Handgrip holes on the upper wing, aileron actuator bulges on the lower wing. Separate underside fuel tank, with much more detail than the Monogram one that is molded as part of the lower wing structure. Details added to the backside of the radiator scoop so it would look okay if the underside fuel tank was omitted from the build. Separate exhaust pipe banks. Resin masts for rigging radio wires. Not all Hawks had radios installed, but they were fairly common. Olimp also provides a rigging diagram in the instruction sheet for those audacious souls who desire a fully-wired aircraft. At first my plan was to only build the Olimp kit. But after a little while I realized I actually needed to have the Monogram kit on hand...so I bought the Accurate Miniatures set and built the two Hawks side-by-side.

The Olimp kit is thirty-one pieces; two styrene sprues, a resin sprue and a clear windshield. I lost the windshield somewhere, so on my build I used the Monogram/AM windshield on the Olimp model, and for the AM model modified a windshield I had in my spares box. I also accidentally ruined the Olimp decal sheet: the only salvageable pieces were the upper wing roundels and the fin flash. For the rest, a buddy in the IPMS/Knoxville Scale Modelers let me use his Micro Scale U.S. Army Air Corps sheet (#72-022) for the squadron insignia and fuselage band, and the rest were culled from spares I had. The Olimp kit build was challenging. The sprues had a thick coat of mold release to be cleaned off, and many of the parts had considerable flashing. The fuselage halves and the propeller needed a lot of work. Most of the parts needed clean-up or trimming of some sort. I dry-fit everything I could...and often had to pare back places where parts either fit too snug or refused to mesh. Meanwhile, I used some of Olimp's ideas to improve the AM (Accurate Miniatures). model. The Olimp cockpit floor was used as a pattern for a floor in the AM example...and I fabricated a pilot's seat from pieces of two disposable shaving razors. The floor (and a firewall) were cut from credit card material. The AM. build was pretty much what I remembered from building the Monogram one...although instead of heat-flaring the back end of the prop shaft, I found another solution--I cut part of a super glue tube applicator cone and used it like a polycap bushing, with a bead of tube glue behind it to hold it in place. It works pretty well. Because some of the parts that were molded together on the Monogram model are separate pieces on the Olimp model, I had to use the Monogram model to judge placement and alignment when installing the corresponding features on the Olimp. Often this was tricky. The struts for the wings were my main disappointment on the Olimp build. Except for separating the cabane struts from the fuselage halves, the struts are basically copies of the Monogram baseline. Only Olimp put smaller locator holes on the wings. The cabane struts just barely fit their matching holes on the underside of the top wing--and the interplane struts did not fit at all. It wasn't till after I finished that I saw that the top wing was slewed slightly clockwise (as seen from above) and this made fitting the interplane struts impossible. It wasn't this big of a problem with the Monogram version...the larger holes on the wings gave room for adjustment and error fixing. Paints for both models were standard Testors enamels, with the exception of Polly-S Sand enamel for cockpit interiors. I painted the Olimp exhausts Engine Silver and the underside fuel tank Sea Blue (closest thing I had to Air Corps Light Blue 23!) to show off their being separate units. The Olimp kit offers markings for two aircraft, one of the 17th Pursuit Squadron ("Snow Owls") and one assigned to Wright Field after the Hawks were withdrawn from first-line service. As said, misfortune made me forgo them both. The buddy who lent me the Micro Scale sheet found some paint schemes in the venerable Aircraft In Profile books...and the one I chose was from the 33rd Pursuit Squadron. This squadron's markings are also available in the Starfighter Decals set 72-106. I kept the AM model's 17th Pursuit Squadron scheme from the box with the exception of omitting the wing stripes (incorrect for that specific aircraft) and the prop decals--the latter omitted from both models. I didn't have any problems with decal applications on either plane...though I should mention that I took extra care fitting the fin flashes to both aircraft, trimming the decals before applying them so they fit correctly. To sum up, the Olimp kit is an admirable effort in making a classic better...while it is an improvement, it doesn't do enough of a job to make the old standby version obsolete. I can only recommend the Olimp kit for advanced modelers who can handle a demanding build. In fact, the main advantages of the Olimp kit--the alternative wheel pants, the cockpit, the improved fuel tank and radiator--could be offered as a transkit for the Accurate Miniatures version. Thanks go out to Olimp, IPMS/USA, IPMS/Knoxville Scale Modelers, and Mike Driskill.

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