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Black Box
48043 F-117A Stealth Set
for 1/48 Tamiya F-117A Stealth
By Steve Bamford
The F-117 has always been an aircraft of great fascination for me. I'm not sure if it's the odd ball shape or the secret abilities of the Stealth during the opening minutes of Operation Desert Storm, but this aircraft is like no other. I've built the regular 1/48 Momogram kit for a nephew long ago and quickly picked up the ProModeller kit and more recently the Tamiya kit. They have sat awaiting resin cockpit sets or I was going to do some serious scratch building to bring their cockpits up to scratch. Black Box saves the day by saving me a huge pile of work by coming out with this set. This set is designed for the Tamiya kit, but I will also compare it to the Promodeller kit for those that are interested.
This is the new 1/48 F-117A resin cockpit set from Black Box. As you can see by the parts layout below...this set is quite complete.
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First things first....cockpit tub. This is a beautiful work of resin. The Tamiya cockpit tub is decent, but the resin tub from Black Box is stunning. The Tamiya tub seems to be missing quite a few switches and buttons that are evident on the actual production F-117's. Also included is a very well done oxygen hose that in the Tamiya tub resembles more of a pipe. The ProModeler tub is HORRIBLE and is nowhere near as nice as some of their other older kits such as the F-18 tub. Although the Black Box tub drops into the Tamiya kit almost with no trimming.....there will be few minutes of work needed to get this resin set to fit the ProModeler plane....but it appears it will fit in there too. It would be well worth the effort to use this set on the Promodeler kit as the cockpit in the Promodeler kit is pretty lame.
The seat in this resin set is typical Black Box perfection. Black Box understands how important the seats are in cockpits and thus the seats are always the strong point of all Black Box sets, which is a good thing because the seat is the one item in the cockpit that really shows. The Tamiya seat really lacks detail and looks toy like....the ProModeler seat is actually fairly decent, but no where as nice with all the crisp detail as the Black Box seat.
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Instrument panel. Hummmm....the Tamiya one is fairly plain and is designed to have decals applied to it (decals are included with the kit). The ProModeler instrument panel is bland and lacking in detail...plus not very accurate when compared to the actual F-117. The Black box instrument panel is sweet. All the detail is there. I had to shoot a picture of the black Box instrument panel and blow it up to a huge size before I could even begin to see anything |
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| that might not be 110% accurate on the Black Box instrument panel. The F-117's did go through a few mods and this is reflected in the instrument panels. The original pre-production F-117's had analog instrument panels. The Black Box appears to be a F-117A Phase 3 production cockpit. The resin instrument panel is part of the area that the HUD mounts to. You will have to do some cutting of the Tamiya and ProModeler kits to get this part to fit but the effort is well worth it. I prefer to paint and dry brush my instrument panels and the Black Box instrument panel will paint up beautifully. |
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| Ok....this next area is a real sore spot with me on most kits and I'm hugely pleased Black box addressed it. The area I'm referring to is the inside rails of the canopy and the area by the hinge pint of the canopy on the airframe behind the pilots head. All to often, as on | ||
| the Tamiya F-117 kit, these areas are completely blank or as on the ProModeller kit...what little detail there is..... is not even close to resembling the actual plane. This part to the right is resin part # 6 in the Black Box set. In the picture to the right it is upside down. This part fits behind the pilots head and would be a critical item if you chose to display the canopy open and I believe everyone that is reading this are the type of modellers that like to display their canopies open. Another added bonus in |
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| this resin set is the rails that attach to the bottom of the canopy, which will add plenty of detail to an otherwise plain and boring canopy, plus give that canopy more of a feeling of weight and substance. All these parts dry fit the Tamiya canopy with no problems. They will require some filing to fit the ProModeller canopy, but they are not too far off the mark all things considered. | ||
The HUD on the Tamiya kit are two pieces of tinted clear plastic that you glue together and paint the fine black lines of the HUD frame on the sides of this clear plastic. This would look ok if the canopy is closed and your view is hindered. In the Black Box set there are 2 lovely HUD frames that you add your own clear plastic "glass" pieces too. The ProModeler HUD is similar to the Black Box HUD, except the ProModeler HUD seems too small and not to scale.
There are other bits and pieces to this cockpit set such as the control stick etc. They are all done well and will enhance our cockpit over the Tamiya or ProModeler kit parts. Finally...the Black Box set includes instructions on how to create the canopy support bars that prop the heavy canopy open. These support bars are included in the Tamiya and ProModeller kits, but Black Box provides resin parts to make these canopy support bars much more accurate. The instructions are complete and easy to follow. All in all I am quite pleased with this latest set from Black Box and I credit master modeller Willy Peeters for creating such a gem of a resin master that this set was cast from. |
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Special thanks to Steve Stohr at North American Hobbies for providing me with this review sample.
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