ARII Model Kits

[Kirby]

Does anyone here know anything at all about ARII (AR II) model kits. Re quality, realism, correct scale, etc.? Any information or advice at all will be greatly appreciated.

Kirby

[NeilE]

Hi Kirby;

I've built one Arii kit (and have a couple of others to do) and found it not a lot of trouble at all. I found fit to be very good, detail levels were generally good, though perhaps the wing ribs on the 1/72 Willow K5-Y Trainer Biplane to be a little too stark and noticable. I do recall that the plastic was a bit brittle bu tnot too bad if care was taken.

Their instructions were fine but colour call-outs for things like interior details were a little vague and generic.

Colour schemes and decal options were nice and Gunze Colours were recommended IIRC.

Decals responded well to setting liquids though they grabbed the surface of the model a little too quickly for my liking and needed lots of water to manouver them about on the model.

Overall, I liked the kit, it was a relatively nice build.

I did no accuracy checks as my info on the Willow is limited.

The piece of trash linked below is my Willow build on Ross Moorhouse's site.

Neil's Kawanishi K5-Y Willow

HTH

Neil

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Does anyone here know anything at all about ARII (AR II) model kits. Re quality, realism, correct scale, etc.? Any information or advice at all will be greatly appreciated.

Kirby

Any particular type? ARII did their own kits, but also reboxed kits made by others, such as Otaki and Eldon.

[Copperhead]

I've done several ARII kits. The P-40; F6F; and Zero, to name a few. I've never done the 'Wllow'. The decals (IMHO) are great. They snuggle down (as Niel_E said TOO quickly, almost TTOOOO quickly to work with), and aside from the heavy handed reverse rivets and panel lines; are basically good kits. What I mean about reverse rivets & panel lines, is they seem to have taken the old Monogram kits, and reversed the direction of the rivets & panel lines! On the old Monogram kits, they were raised. On the ARII kits they're recessed. But there's MORE than needed. Other than that, they're VERY good kits. I only had problems with the large run decals ( like the bomb data on the F4U,) wanting to tear in half. JW

[Kirby]

My apologies for not getting back sooner. The personal attacks and the petty bickering in the Off Topic forum have really put me off from coming to the Aerodrome on a regular basis.

I thank all of you for the input. I know this is supposed to be WWI modeling but I streched the envelope a little.

My son served five years aboard the USS Ranger (CV 61) and there are still ARII kits of this ship available. I'm thinking of buying and building one. Every once in a while an old Revell kit shows up on Ebay but more often than not Ebay Insanity takes over and the price zooms upwards.

Thanks again gang. All input is greatly apprciated.

Kirby

[Kirby]

A Revell kit of the Ranger just sold for $92.00 on Ebay.

[topgun56]

Darn, with prices like that I need to up the values on my home owner's insurance. But then E Bay is nuts !!!!! I looked at kits on there....there are sellers selling kits for 10 USD that I can buy at WalMart (my local hobby shop) for 6 USD.

ARII kits are mostly reissued kits from others. I have several ARII kits that are the same as AMT/ERTLE.