Rare-Plane Detective 1/60 Convair XF2Y-1 Sea Dart

By Al Superczynski

This limited reissue of the ancient Strombecker kit was produced by Mandrill Manufacturing from the original tooling in 1989. My example is number 198 out of 1000 manufactured. I've never examined an original Strombecker version but the molds were apparently pretty well-preserved. There isn't much flash on the thirteen navy blue parts and a dry fit shows no assembly problems other than warped fuselage halves. The only other piece provided is a sheet of clear plastic from which to cut cockpit windows using patterns provided on the instruction sheet.

 

 

 

 

There's no display stand and I doubt that the original Strombecker kit featured one since there's no trace of a mounting slot on the fuselage bottom.

Surface detail consists of fine rivets and raised (!) lines for the control surfaces and canopy separation joint. The skid struts are very crude and there's absolutely no cockpit detail whatsoever, not even a pilot figure. The exhaust is blanked off but the intakes reveal the model's hollow interior.

On the plus side, the instructions clearly show two of the many markings variations and the decals appear to be of good quality and quite usable. They actually look much better than the pic shown here since I had to darken the scan considerably to show the white markings.

This is another perfect example of the early days of plastic kits; because of its odd scale and lack of detail it's not really a candidate for a serious model but would look good posed in-flight on a stand, which is exactly the way I intend to build it. I picked mine up for $25 but it's probably worth more than that to a collector.

Till next month, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to",
and be sure to visit Al's Place while you're surfing the 'Net!

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