Miniwing 1/144 Dornier Do 18 G-1
By Matt Bittner
The Kit
The Miniwing 1/144 Dornier Do 18 G-1 consists of approximately 37 pieces of resin and six vacuform clear pieces (thankfully all doubled). Moldings are very nice and the parts look very well cast. There are decals for one aircraft, M2+K from 1940 in a scheme of RLM 72/73 over RLM 65. The decals are ALPS printed so care must be taken in the handling and installation of decals. (Unfortunately my computer is all screwy and I can't provide a scan of those decals.)
The instructions consist of only one sheet of paper, with everything being shown in one step. There is a cockpit, which consists of the main floor unit that includes the instrument panel, a rear bulkhead, two seats and two control columns. Once that is inserted into a fuselage half then the fuselage halves can be glued together.
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Next to be glued on will be the tail pieces followed by the large engine pod that sits atop the fuselage and to which the wings are glued to. From here you'll need to decide how to proceed. Do you glue the wings to the engine pod and mask and paint? Paint the engine pod prior to attaching the wings? I'm not exactly sure how you would want to proceed. Maybe paint the pod and then assemble the wings, mask the pod then continue with painting the rest of the model.
The rest of the parts consists of some struts to attach to the horizontal tail pieces, the pontoons that attach to the fuselage, and then props and spinners (the props are separate from the spinners - too bad UMM doesn't make a 1/144 PropMaster :-) ), then followed with the really small parts like guns and gun rings. You'll probably want to glue the clear pieces on and mask those prior to painting, to be sure the fit is good.
Conclusion
This is a very nice kit! It's larger than I thought, which makes it perfect for 1/144 scale. Miniwing did such a great job on this, and the guns are works of art. Recommended, but only if you've built resin kits before, especially 1/144 ones.
My thanks to Minwing for the review kit.