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Fox One 1/144 Lysander Mk.I

By Don Joy

This is a wonderful little kit from Fox One Design Studio. Matt’s “in box” review is quite accurate and anyone who builds 1/144^th is going to want one of these. The resin is high quality with only a couple of minor bubbles found during construction. Fit is excellent and detail is the right blend for the scale.

The Lysander first flew in 1936 and entered squadron service in 1938. The aircraft belonged to a class known as “army cooperation” aircraft and were intended for spotting and light attack duties. The realities of air war in 1940 quickly showed the type was not survivable in front line service in that role, but the Lysander was a well designed and rugged aircraft with excellent short field and low speed characteristics. These abilities were used in many subsidiary roles, the most glamorous being to supply the French Resistance during clandestine missions into occupied Europe.

INSTRUCTIONS:

The instruction sheet is clear and the painting guide provides 4 view color profiles of two different aircraft. I found the instructions very complete and better than average for resin kits.

INTERIOR:

The interior is about as complete as you can want. The central piece has the floor, central fuel tank, and rear radios and “black boxes” molded in. I added the seats (front and back), control stick, and painted the interior Model Master RAF Interior Green. Fuel tank is silver; black boxes – well, black.

The interior of the fuselage halves have stingers molded in. There are left and right cockpit wall framing that glues to each half. These are finely molded and the left side has a throttle quadrant on it; the right a trim wheel. No lack of detail on this kit! Showing the pieces to the 48^th scale modelers in the club elicited a gratifying “OMG!”

I repeated the RAF Interior Green for those pieces, then dry brushed silver to highlight the detail.

FUSELAGE ASSEMBLY:

At this point, I put the fuselage together. Everything mates extremely well. I had to fill some minor gaps with Mr. Surfacer, but if I had been more careful in construction, they probably would not have been there. It is always a problem when you rush construction, which is a lesson you would think I would learn by now.

There is a “frame” piece that fits around the top of the cockpit area and includes the interior struts for the wings. The pilot’s seat got in the way of this and I had to remove the seat to get a correct fit. It would have been better to leave the forward seat out until this point in the construction, then install it.

I added the landing struts, tail and stabilizers at this point. I used gel super glue and touched up any of the remaining gaps with Mr. Surfacer.

The exterior has detail ribbing, which is exaggerated for this scale. I think Fox One got it just right though. The ribs are exaggerated enough to stand out without being overwhelming on the small model. The same is true for the ribbing in the wings.

CANOPY and ENGINE:

The canopy has to be installed at this point because the engine fits over a part of the forward fuselage that is molded into the canopy piece. The canopy itself is fairly “heavy” – clear resin instead of vacuform. I found that the forward fuselage part of the canopy extended past the kit fuselage. I had to sand it flush with the fuselage so the engine would mount properly. This is fairly obvious during testing fitting and is an easy fix.

I decided at this point that I was going to brush paint in the kit instead of airbrushing. That choice was mainly determined because of all the framing on the canopy. Since the wings attach to the canopy and there are struts on either side, I painted the canopy frames before attaching pieces that would get in the way. I let the kit set a day, then came back to finish construction. (In retrospect, I wish I had cut thin strips of decal film for the framing instead of painting them. Oh well…live and learn.)

WINGS and STRUTS:

The wings were glued directly to the canopy using the super glue gel. After the wings were solid, I attached the struts. That is not as simple as it sounds.

The struts have square locators to fit the receivers in the wing. I found these did not fit and sanded them off. I never got them to mate as well as I would like (lack of patience again…), but if the strut is attached in the notch on the landing gear strut and then lined up over the receiver holes in the wing,  they align perfectly and get the wing at exactly the right dihedral. Very nice engineering on Fox One’s part.

PAINTING:

I decided to build the plane in Finnish markings, so I painted it at this point. As stated earlier, I hand brushed it. One trick to this is to use thin paint and apply multiple coats. I used Light Gray, Medium Green, and black for the colors. The black on Finnish planes is actually a very dark green, so that would be more correct if not more noticeable.

The cowl ring was painted separately before being attached. This gives a straight edge to the break between the bronze cowl ring and the painted cowl without needed to mask anything.  The wheels are unique, being oblong pieces that shows only the round part after they are mounted. Those were also painted separately and attached.

 

DECALS:

I cut decal film for the yellow panels on the wing and the fuselage stripe. Once those were dry, I applied the kit decals. Those went on easily and tolerated SolveSet quite well. Like most Alps decals, the white is thin on the national markings. You may want to paint a white background or put some white decal film under the Finnish markings to prevent “bleed thru”.

FINISHING:

A few other decisions need to be made. There are 3 external armament options: 16 x 50lb anti personnel bombs, 4 x 250lb bombs or 2 x 20mm cannon. I settled on the 50lbs because I thought they were unique. Small winglets are attached to the landing gear spats and 6 bombs are attached to each of those. Another cluster of 4 bombs is attached under the rear fuselage. Some light weathering and this kit is done.

COMMENTS:

This was an easy build and the kit went together extremely well. The problems I had were of my own creation. Still, I feel like I have to say something about the interior detail and the canopy on the kit.

The canopy is optically clear and heavier than normal for a 1/144^th scale kits. Because of that, it fits very well without the trimming and fitting that is always necessary with a vacuform canopy.  The problem is that even though it is clear, it is too thick to see the interior when it’s in place. Also, it is too thick to cut and display with the canopy open.

But a vacuform or open canopy would still not show all the interior included with this kit because of the structure of the aircraft. That wonderful detailing is really wasted since you can’t see it. I suppose you could do a cutaway fuselage and show it, but that would be about it. It is just a shame that the parts are there and go together well, but are not visible in the finished product.

This kit definitely gets an A+. I am very happy with the results and recommend the kit to anyone that builds in this scale. Have your tweezers handy for the small bits!

Thanks to Fox One for the review sample. Note the kit is available from radjapan.