To be honest I don’t know if I would have bought this model if it hadn’t been a birthday gift. I have never heard of the maker and the price was a bit steep. If the shopkeeper hadn’t let me open the box, it probably would still be there collecting dust. But after opening it I had to have it.

I have had the privilege of being around Apaches and know the size of them, but I was still taken aback when I opened the box!! This is a monster of a model. Crisp and clean detail screamed out at me, begging me to detail it!! My brother was on the design team for the Apache and without letting him see the box, I showed him the sprues, “Wow, a D, very nice” was his only comment. Whew, I thought, it passed the expert's eye!! But to give him a bit of credit it was an Apache in pieces, but at any rate the overall initial feeling of the model is a very crisp tooling with a true Apache feeling. I’m hoping it will stay that way upon being built too!

Contents

Upon opening the box you will find 6 plastic bags, a decal sheet and an instruction fold-out. The model is molded in a light grey color, without the slightest hint of flash. There is one sprue of clear plastic for the canopy and running lights and one of vinyl for the tires. The vinyl wheels are a bit hollowed inside the tire, so it will be interesting to see if I can get the typical bulge the tires have under weight, without having to model it. Looking at the thickness of some of the parts, this baby is not only going to be big, she’s going to be heavy too!

Details, details and more details galore!! I can’t say enough about the clarity of the details. It is these that sold the model to me. It is going to be a fun task of picking out all of the instruments and goodies in the cockpit. Since Kangnam includes the pilot and weapons officer, I’m faced with a big decision too. Do I hide all of that incredible detail with the people or do I do an open hatch version, hmm…decisions, decisions…

On the downside, the model seems to be tooled too thickly in places. Understand me right, the parts that need to be thin are thin, but some of the pieces could have been tooled more delicately I think. Basically, what I am meaning is that if you are planning to open any of the hatches, be prepared to trim the thickness of the cutout part. The canopy is also grossly thick, that is if the Apache doesn’t have 3 to 4 cm (roughly 1 3/16” to 1 9/16”) thick glass. Since I am not an expert on this maybe this is the case? Another downside is, but I haven’t measured yet, the pilot and WO seem a bit large for 1/35 scale. That or I am just used to Tamiya’s midgets. Yet another is the instructions, they are a bit thin and void of detail for my liking. I don’t need a book, but it would be nice to get a few close-ups to clear any ambiguity. Seeing that the instructions are thin I wouldn’t suggest this model to a beginner as a first model, having a couple models under your belt will make you appreciate the model more.

Conclusion

As you can tell I’m trying to find bad parts of the model too. Because all in all I am surprised by the clarity of the detail in the tooling, Kangnam has that definitely going for them. Hopefully Kangnam will put out other subjects like this as well.