So, my first kit of this build for me will be the Devastator. The biggest challenge of this kit - retaining the corrugated sheetmetal work on the wings, and raised panel lines everywhere else.
All the sprues that came in the box. For the first time since I was a kid, I'll remove all parts from the sprues (except for the clear parts), and clean them all up before applying any glue. I noticed some flash on some parts, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with an X-Acto knife, a sanding stick, and some good music playing on the iPod.
A few hours later, here is what I have. All parts are cleaned up, at least to my eyes, but I just know that I'll find little anomolies here and there while gluing things together.
As I had mentioned earlier, I noticed that the bottom of the wing center section has this small copyright marking on it, indicating 2001. Weird, as I didn't know that this kit was ever released in any year other than the mid-1970s. Stik has since informed me otherwise. The instruction sheet shows a 1974 copyright date, as does the box. Nothing to concern myself about, I guess - just weird.
Here is the back of the decal sheet, which brings back a lot of memories from my Monogram-only-kid days. It shows a date of 10-81 in the lower right corner, so these were probably printed October 1981.
They look pretty good for being 36 years old, though. Hope they hold up when I'm ready to use them......
Anyways, I did find some small injector pin marks on most of the parts, but, luckily, most of them easily sanded away. Most are in areas where they won't be seen anyway, so no biggie if I couldn't snad them away completely.
I'm done for tonight. Hope to have another update tomorrow.
Gary Mason