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Miniwing 1/144 L.T.V. TA-7H

By Dave Flitton

I won't provide a preview since this has already been covered in Matt Bitner's First Look.

The actual kit is easy to put together, very petit, and a great exercise for your Optivisor! I drilled out the intake to make it deeper as I thought the original cast was too shallow. While drilling out the intakes, I also drilled out some of the interior of the front landing gear to add a few lead weights (very small ones) to make sure the aircraft was not a tail sitter.

Decals are poor. They seem to be printed in "draft" mode instead of high quality mode.  The blues are too light, especially the markings for the US craft.  To my eyes, they were not useable.  I opted for the Greek machines since they are the only ones still flying these wonders from the 70's. When I was cutting the decals, the ink would scratch off the insignia, leaving a white trace.  When I was glueing the decals to the cockpit to simulate the controls, one of the decals lost all of the ink to the glue.  Be careful with these delicate prints, they cannot be replaced unless you copy them first.

The end result makes the aircraft too "guppy-like". The cockpit area looks like it was not only expanded to add length to the cocpit (which is correct) but it also added width (which is incorrect).

All-in-all, I liked the build of this aircraft but to make it "more correct" I would have to sand the sides down and re-scribe the panels.

Thanks to Internet Modeler and Miniwing for the review sample.