Drabslab reviews AMK's quarterscale kit of the classic French jet trainer - the Fouga Magister.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Thanks for doing the review. Is anyone actually going to build it? It would look great on the site

The team enjoyed the review and thanks again.

Of course, I am going to build it, why you think I bought it?

Oeps, stash, and failed campaigns, and hangar queens

But yes, I am currently building it, and will be reporting on it on Aeroscale as well.
by the way, I made some constructively meant criticisms/remarks during my review. I would be happy to read your views on that in this thread as well.

Brilliant. I’ll be following along.

Any idea of the scheme yet?

If you could link the build that would be great.... can’t find it

Choosing and compromising, it ain't easy.

The AMK Fouga must be the most precise offering on the model market but as soon as one starts comparing it to detailed information for a specific Fouga magister of a specific country, one finds that deviating equipment has been installed that is not included in the box.

I can't blame AMK for this. It is a given fact that aircraft are updated all the time, and a model manufacturer has no other option but to stick to the most common variants and parts, otherwise the box would cost a fortune.

Hence, my model of the Fouga Magister "Red Devil" will not be perfect. Especially the cockpit layout will miss the GPS system and a few other things.

I can live will that, I never made much of a rivet counter but some errors have to go and I will not follow the building instructions to closely.

Let's see how this will turn out

The instruction sheet and the kit give a 3 pieces black seat.

The information I have is that the Fouga had a single piece brown "tub" kind of seat, similar to WWII aircraft in some sort of synthetic material ( No, not Bakelite ).



Later on, instead of sitting on their parachute, pilots started adding a cushion for comfort.

For my model, the kit seats will do, adding the leather cushions.

The seats more or less finished, just some cleaning left to do.





The seats look pretty good in real life, those photo' don't do them justice. Photography, one other thing to learn how to master.

The safety belts are PE. Very detailed but real safety belts usually are lying in a very casual way on the seat. It is not easy to fake this with those quite sturdy PE belts.

The sticks that those seats are sitting on are simple leftover sprue, heated up on one end with a candle and then pressed against a flat surface. With some temporary glue these are excellent to hold pieces to work on.

The cockpit, as I saw on the real thing, is black. Nothing but black ( with few exceptions) with tiny buttons in grey, or was it black originally that is worn of?

What to do now? Add some colour to give a better artistic effect and look more impressive? I personally don't like that too much and so the cockpit will be black overall with only colour where I found it also on the real thing; this may be more boring but....

The instrument dials received a drop of future to give a glass-like appearance



Just watch those huge ejection marks. these seem to be a trademark for this kit. Luckily they will largely disappear under the seats.




The oxygen bottles are white with a black collar (which is in reality a piece of metal holding the bottles in place). The copper parts on the top are valves.



With seats installed:



The instruction sheets don't make any mention of the PE seat belts but two metal weights to avoid tail sitting are clearly shown. I'll be careful to check with future parts if they are not available in plastic, and/or PE or metal.

The final product:




and a dry fit:




Quite pleased with this. This seems to be going somewhere.

Until now, the fit is perfect, instructions are nearly 100% correct. This kit is delivering on its promise of quality. The only thing that ruins the picture a bit are the ejection marks but luckily those disappear under the seats.

Still, this is bad news for those wanting to build a maintenance scene with the seats outside the aircraft.

Great start. What marking will You use ? I understand that Israel used these in ground attack role, and there was one famously involved in Cong/Katanga war if I do remember correctly.

The "Red Devils" marking; I owe that to some very good childhood memories.

In fact, the Red Devils acrobatic team was flying with 6 Fouga Magister, with one spare. My intention is to make one AMK Fouga in maintenance, and 6 others as a team line up.

I always struggle with the idea of representing the colour of modern cockpits as they are, or embellishing them with some colour for added interest. It always seems a shame to cloak a wonderfully detailed cockpit under black paint. But I think you have the balance absolutely right with your cockpit.

tim

Same for me. and I have the same problem with panel lines and weathering.





Thanks Tim

A small update on the progress:

The secondary tank, right behind the cockpit. In contradiction to the instructions, the plate confronting the cockpit must be black, not white.

As this part will be invisible in my configuration of the kit, I experimented with some heavy weathering, I don't like the effect.



and there is one tiny part with some flash



Just behind the cockpit there is a avionics compartment. The equipment here has changed over time. I have it most certainly wrong for the particular plane I want to build



Ejection marks are everywhere, in some cases very nasty. in a normal model where there is always an invisible back side on each part, this would not matter but here, when wanting to build it all open it is an issue:



Now I continue with constructing the other inside tanks, and then its time to close this little boy

Some progress:

The main tank:



with ejection pin mark removal



Inside framing




The fit is really perfect and building is easy, something I did not expect putting together the very delicate parts.

Nevertheless, it takes an unusual amount of work before reaching that "main" moment when I can close the fuselage but it is fun.

The nose of many Fouga has two impressive looking large antenna, unfortunately the model I am building does not have this, hence the openings foreseen to position those antenna must be removed:

the original:



with some Tamiya putty and elbow grease:



In the meantime I also airbrushed the inside of the fuselage, and added some red to the outside in a difficult to reach place once the fuselage has been put together.

Great so far sir. Keep going.

How are you finding the fit and details now?

Fit is just perfect and the detail is exquisite. Your modelling and design department have done an outstanding job. Also the mould manufacturing is just magnificent.

I think you need to have a talk with manufacturing shop tough and find a way to reduce those ejection marks

Hiya,
We did and we have reduced them even further on the MiG-31.
In producing plastic kits you will never reduce them all but we engineered the kit to put them in places not normally seen, mostly. Sometimes this cannot be helped.

I know, but like most plastoholics I hate ejection marks, they are just ... "not cool".

By the way, I very happily add that the kit is very well designed and very accurate. I think you put a lot of time in ... and have had the help of a specialist in all Fouga matters (from a small EU country perhaps?)

And ok, writing a build review with nothing but "perfect fit" and "magnificent detail" remarks would be a bit boring too, isn't it.

and then, all things fall in their right place:



fuselage closed, a main event with any aircraft model:

Almost ready for the paint shop:



and then, two seconds after the previous picture was taken, my office lamp collapses, slams on the table missing the model by a few millimetre.




It turns out that the metal part that is holding the LED lights and magnifying glass has broken:





pfew, all that hard work almost turned to rubble.