This is a f***ing wicked kit! It sat in my stash for over a year before I had the confidence to go at it. It looked a lot more complex than it actually was. The kit comes with absolutely everything. PE parts, metal landing gear, a solid instrument panel and a decent range of munitions. Moreover, it comes with lots of configuration options. You can have the wings up with the stowage rods as pictured or wings down with all the flaps out and the nose open. It even has a radar dish in the nose and the intake ladder is deployable (though it's a tricky PE job). This is not a beginner's kit by any means.
Build wise my only complaint is the way the front half of the canopy fits to the fuselage. The front join is on the fuselage only a thin bit of plastic and the canopy didn't quite align so I had a bit of sanding and filling to do. If you look closely you can see it's not perfect here, and I may revisit it in the future.
There is one other thing. The wing hinge. It's small, incredibly brittle and not really load bearing so mounting the wings up is not an easy job at all. Once I had it all balanced in place I set about it with strategic blobs of superglue otherwise it wouldn't withstand a light breeze.
Other than that, this is probably the best kit I've ever seen and at just over £40, though quite pricey, you really do get your money's worth. The instructions can be a bit vague and that seems to be the common theme with Chinese kits, but the full colour painting charts they come with are great.
I loved doing this one because I am big Intruder fan. Flight of the Intruder is one of the greatest films of all time, and it's better than Top Gun. That is a hill I will die on. It's also the US equivalent of the Buccaneer which I also love. They sit side by side on the model shelf. I liked this one so much that I probably will do another and have the wings down and do it in the Devil 505 colours as per the film.
After completing this I feel a bit of a fraud. It looks and feels like a pro build even though I know it isn't. I've a long way to go before I can call myself a master, but this one is hugely rewarding. My one regret is running out of steam and not doing the full bomb racks, opting instead for the single GBU48. I had a feeling it would all fall to pieces when attaching it to the aircraft and I just wanted it done by then.
If you're doing this, I recommend using a light grey for pre-shading the underside to save on white paint. This one is let down by the white coat on the underside being a little too thick - as a consequence of using black pre-shade. This time I used one of the Tamiya paint markers. To be honest, I'm not a fan. I had some issues with the paint coming off when peeling off masking tape and it was usually in those areas where the paint marker had been. I'm sure they do have their uses but I think stick to the airbrush for pre-shading.
I've since added Remove before Flight tags to the front of the bombs which really sets this one off. the tags are PE tags that came with some Eduard resin Sidewinder missiles which turned out to be pretty useless. If you want missiles, go with the Hasegawa weapons sets. They're a bit dated now but then so are most of the aircraft.
I have to say I'm super impressed with HobbyBoss. On the back of this I bought the Su-27 which just fell together and I have an F-111Dsitting in the stash. They're brilliant. They're not cheap but they're not stupidly expensive either and you certainly do get everything you could possibly want. If this becomes the future standard then producers of after market resin parts are going out of business, and if Tamiya and Airfix want to stay in the game then they have up their game considerably.
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