by Mark Powley
Revell-Germany's 1/144 kit. This kit has to be one of the most annoying and disappointing kits I have ever done. Apparently RoG use a couple of different contractors to do their tooling. Unfortunately this kit was tooled by one of the dodgy contractors. Fit around the nose intakes was terrible as was the fit of both wings to the fuselage. Both tailplaned were warped but both in different directions. Plus all of the parts had the roughest texture I've seen on almost any kit - it was if the contractor had forgotten to polish the mould once it had been machined out. Generous amounts of filler, Liquid Paper correction fluid and a can of Auto Spray Primer/Filler along with lots of elbow grease and patience sorted out most of the problems.
Being a What-If fan, I decided to finished the Ekranoplan in a hypothetical scheme. I had originally planned on doing a Qantas version but the terrible fit killed my enthusiasm as far as that went. Eventually I went for a futuristic RAAF scheme instead. Being intended for low level, over water operations I thought a two-tone blue-grey would be in order with the colours applied in bands to look roughly like waves when viewed from above. I settled on Matt RAF Blue for the darker blue with a mix of Light Ghost Gray and RAF Blue for the lighter blue. For markings I used an Aussie Decals RAAF P-3 Orion decal sheet. While I was at it I decided to make a base for the Ekranoplan and pose it inflight as if it was coming in to land. I cut the propellors off and replaced them with circles of clear plastic sheet so it looked like the props were moving.
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