1/72 Hasegawa EP-3E Orion

by Thomas Neuss

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EP-3E Orion, Hasegawa 1/72 with Superscale Decals (72-433) and engine from “Engine&Things” (Engine & Things 72002 Allison T-56 for P-3)

Intro

There is not much to say about the EP-3E, since the “mid-air-collision”-incident with a Chinese interceptor and the resulting trouble this type of electronic intelligence aircraft is well known.

The Kit

The kit is the standard Hasegawa P-3C Orion kit with extra resin parts for the different "bumps" and fairings. But it is still a little bit basic with some things totally missing (like the wire antennas or the votex generators) and in some aspects with very little detailing. So I added a little bit of time and work, because I wanted to show my EP-3E with an open engine bay and with flaps in lower position and add the other missing parts. 

The Building

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 The Building of the kit was straight forward until the wing area. Here I had to remove the flaps and closed the holes to avoid the direct view thru the wing and middle fuselage section. The flaps themselves where scratchbuilt, using plastic sheet and thin wire, all in all 16 parts / flap. But I think, it was worth the effort, the Orion looks great with the flaps down.  

The next task was the open engine bay, and the worst problem wasn`t the building of it, much harder was to find pictures of an Orion with an open engine bay to see how it opens etc. (and if anybody has some good photos of it – please send them to me), I was not very lucky to find them. The only things I have are some technical drawings in b&w and very bad pictures from where you can get an idea of the thing). But I had the engine from “Engine&Things”, so I wanted to use it. So I cut of the engine cowling and build the “inner life” of the engine bay. I used different types and sizes of plastic sheet and metal wire and I think, the result is fine, even if the engine itself is very hard to find after I finished.  

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The rest of the kit was not very dramatic to build, the resin parts where no problem and fit good and the kit is not very demanding, all in all. The votex generators (directly behind the big fairing under the fuselage) are made from plastic sheet and the wire antennas are very thin fishing line I bought in a fishing shop around the corner. It seems to be the best solution for wire antennas, strong, fine and smooth. To fix them I drilled holes in the fuselage and glued some thin metal tubes in them. Now it was very easy to fix the fishing line with superglue into this “sockets”.

At last I added some antennas under the tail, again made from plastic sheet.  

Painting and Decaling

There is not much to say about the painting, I used my airbrush and Gunze colors, as always. I sprayed in different layers, first all grey with dark grey on the raised panel lines to make them “visible”. On this is the final layer in the aircraft colour. It is on the pictures not visible, but it has a nice effect.  

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The decals are from Superscale, sheet 72-433 “EP-3E / P-3B VQ-1 & VP-4”.

The Hasegawa decals are really good and you need them for the wingwalks and some warning signs, but the aircraft Hasegawa offers is a little bit boring, so I decided to use the colourful Superscale decals.  

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Conclusion

I enjoyed the building of the kit. Even if you don`t lower the flaps and keep the engine bays closed, this is an impressive kit if finished. Some extra detailing should be done to come to an good result, but all in all this should be no problem, the fitting of the parts is good, and everybody can decide, how much detailing he wants.

Thomas 

Photos and text © by Thomas Neuss