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Attic Aircraft Lavi in box review


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I always thought the Lavi was a neat looking jet and when I saw a 1/48 resin kit out, I plunked the funds down for one. I won't say a lot, but let you guys come to your conclusions from the pictures. I will say a couple of things here. The gaps you see are as much closed as they can get without heat or other persuasion. The landing gear, wheels, and seats are plastic. They appear to be removed from another kit. There is no surface details at all, perfectly smooth aside from the bubbles. Decals are unusable, look like inkjet printed on wet paper. On the good side, you don't have to worry about filling and sanding any details off. Is this the way they come or perhaps, do I have a bootleg copy?

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Looks interesting. Although, I have to say that it looks like all of the smaller parts are from other kits. Nose gear and nose wheel are from the Italeri Eurpfighter, and most of the others are in some shape or form from a Hasegawa F-16, including the canopy inserts, seats, cockpits, intake, etc. Good luck though.

Cheers,

-Doug :thumbsup:

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YGBFKM!!! After some of the reviews of the XL as well as this "Gem" I am certian I am not going to be plunking anything down unless they come up with something a heck of a lot more quality oriented.

You have no retraction actuators for the MLG, you have no support structure for the canopy, the MLG legs are not from the Hasegawa kits either, Hase does not have Push pegs for Rolling wheels.

No details in the wheel wells at all.

Now on to the good points.

Nice GE f-404 nozzle there.

Good to see the wings are part of the fuselage, no messy putty for the seams...

And I thought they were actually supposed to be getting better in their casting and molding...

William G

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As far as I can tell with detail, The seats are definitely Has F-16's, Canopies are copies of Has F-16's, cockpit seems to be copies with bad mods (maybe, or bad molding), cockpit tubs are virtually copies, wheels are plucked from the kits, the MLG struts seem to be modified F-16 struts, and the intake, well, seems to be a cross between the Wolfpack intake and a Hasegawa intake. Can't really tell because you can't make out the details of the gear well itself. I'd say that at least half the kit is either copied or taken from the F-16 kits. Heck, it even looks like the plastic they used (probably the F-16D Thunderbirds boxing) for the Has F-16 molds.

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Scary looking!

This looks bad.. I ordered the new 1/48 F-16XL for the Tamiya kit but havent received it yet, if this is the quality expected of their 'new' kit than I guess I'm going to have a tough time ahead....
I've been waiting for PolymerAddict to report back about the one he ordered.

Please post some info about yours when you get it.

I was considering buying one but I was worried. Now I'm scared!

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This is certainly not worth any money!!

building it will be very long time, and resin is just not that easy to work with. Looking at the tail, how to get it good, if its already very hard and britle.

I would ask money back and buy something which is better!

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Standard operating procedure for attic: offer up something that people want in 48th and make it the worst possible copy of that subject using shoddy workmanship and horrible casting.

Their "HH-3E" conversion was highly anticipated, but when it came down to it, it was almost totally unusable. After looking at an example of their conversion, I decided to kitbash and scratchbuild.

Until Attic's attention to detail, sculpting and casting capabilities take a significant leap forward, I won't be buying from them.

Jon

Edited by Cobrahistorian
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What I don't get is... what's the deal with the styrene parts? I've *never* seen that before in a commercial product.

Assuming they sell more than one of these things (you'd have to plan, what, 20 or so pulls to wear out the RTV?)... how the heck do they plan to get enough seats/struts and wheels to put IN them?!? Are they just raiding the spares bin to flesh out the kits? Does that mean that whatever struts/wheels I get depends on what ever useless junk Attic has laying around? Why on *earth* wouldn't they just cast them? I mean, the wheels and seats would be simple to do, and while resin struts would be fragile and prone to breakage... it's not like they're maintaining high standards to begin with.

I mean, abysmal casting and crappy masters I get - that's not really anything new in the aftermarket world. But tossing spare kit parts in for 'detail'? That's just WEIRD.

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I've recently gotten a copy of their F3H-1 Demon wings conversion set. Instead of a single peice wing, they cast upper and lower halves for each and both are about 4 times a thick as they should be. Gee, thanks. Looks like open pour into molds with no vac to remove air. No detail at all, just depressions where there should be panel lines. No decals. Took over a month to get my order.

Rick L.

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I checked their website and didn't even see the Lavi but I did find this gem:

"We hope the name ATTIC Aircraft Models will become synonymous with excellence in resin models of important and innovative aircraft."

Well, I hope for world peace... ;-)

Cheers,

Andre

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I've been really tempted to get their 48th RQ-4A Global Hawk kit, since my wife's uncle builds the things. I figure, on an airplane that doesn't have much in the way of detail, I could get by with one of their abominations... and then I see this and it changes my mind completely once again.

What the heck do we do? Send him a letter? Petition? He does some great subjects, but completely murders them!

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It's really hard to beleive that he's improved the F-16XL to the point where its usable. Well, the 'improved' XL 'complete kit' was item 1 when I submitted my letter to Santa, so maybe we'll find out. Wasn't someone here getting an 'improved' F-16XL?

Edited by sv51macross
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