¹⁄35

First Jets

The Kits

When you open the two boxes, you first notice there are few sprues. Two for the Pioneer kit and only one for the He 178! But with the Condor kit, you are rewarded with a small photo etched fret for some detail parts (picture 1). There is also one PE fret in the Special hobby kit (picture 2), but there are only two parts for the front landing gear on it? I think it's the smallest PE fret I ever saw. The total parts (including the injected canopy for both kits and PE) are of 44 for the Heinkel and 41 for the Gloster. Far away from the 100+ you find in average WW2 kits.

Between the two kits you can see that short-run manufactures are improving in the quality of their mouldings. The Condor kit, though acceptable, is made of hard pale grey plastic with the usual flash. The panel lines are nicely done but, in my opinion, not deep enough. Overall, the kit is a good example of what was the standard ten years ago, and you will need to sand the surface a little bit to get rid of the small imperfections! The Special Hobby offering is more crisply done and the grey plastic is softer (almost vinyl like!) with very good surface detail. If there weren't some flash and no locator pins, I would say it is almost Tamigawa quality. In the He 178 kit you also have an instrument panel printed on a plastic film and the "goodie" of the E.28/39 is a nice little decal sheet.

The instructions of the Condor kit are quite basic: some history of the plane, two step assembly drawings, two view painting guide and a parts reference guide. About the later, I noticed the layout of the parts was different than the one I found on the kit sprue! I guess it's because the instructions were originally made for the 1/72 kit! They even used the same box; that’s why there is a 1/48 sticker on the front cover! The instructions of the Special Hobby kit are more detailed: you have some history as well, a four step detailed assembly guide and two four view painting instruction guides. The parts reference guide is also there and this time it matches the real sprue layout of the kit.

Overall, I would say the Special Hobby kit looks better in the box, and therefore the Pioneer takes the lead.