American Champion Decathlon - VFR Models - 1/72nd 3D-printed kit

 

Do you want problems? Buy one of these kits.

If you, fellow modeler, looking at the photos of the completed model, feel inclined to buy it (or a similar offering), I suggest you first read the step-by-step construction article and review, as what you see here is a serious amount of effort (additions, refinements, corrections, modifications, substitutions, etc) on a kit that needs all of the above.

For the step-by-step building post and impressions on the kit, please go to:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2022/02/american-champion-decathlon-vfr-models.html

This is the plane where my good friend David TallMan of Chicago, after being the passenger on a particularly aerobatic flight, disbursed the contents of that morning's breakfast, followed by the past ten meals he had, and then some he didn't even remember having, redecorating in the process the interior of such plane, an occasion that for some unfathomable reason he wanted to have a memento of. I know. My thoughts exactly.

Photos of this plane show it with wheel pants and plain yellow spinner, or without the pants and a ribbon on the spinner (as my friend flew in it). But what interest me in this case is the exploration of the 3D printing medium, and its results.

As a new medium, 3D-printed kits are perhaps something alike to what vacuum-formed and resin kits were in their onset in respect to injected plastic kits, that is, cottage industry alternatives for types that the mainstream manufacturers were unlikely to touch. Those alternate media were not and are not necessarily below injected standards, as there are many vacuum- and resin kits that easily surpass a number of the injected offerings. Some end up being better, in able hands, than the run-of-the-mill offerings. The general thinking is: if you want something more esoteric, you will have to go the alternate path. Different media challenged the modeler to familiarize with new techniques, materials, and building strategies.

It seems that the recent emergence of 3D-printed kits would be somewhere in those lines. And in part it is, being their main (and perhaps only) appeal that they offer types that again mainstream won't likely touch. There are, as with all the other media, bad 3D-printed kits, and others that are better, but even those better kits suffer the bane of 3D-printing: those layering ridges, and in some cases deformed parts, not very clear transparencies, and decals that leave a bit to be desired. So why chose them? If you are not a scratch-builder, and you really, really want a model of the plane you love, then they may be an option. Or if you are not particularly demanding or fussy. They offer some interesting approaches though, in this case a full, hollowed fuselage (no seams to deal with) and a detailed interior in one piece. That's great, but at the same time occasionally it may hinder other operations (see the building thread for this model). It would also be desirable if the manufacturers of 3D-printed kits, who surely have a profound grasp of digital technologies, for which they are to be admired, would apply some practical common sense regarding how models are assembled and painted by modelers, thus providing good engineering in the areas of parts' breakdown, proper locating devices, self-alignment features, sensible assembly and painting sequence, mechanical strength of the parts, and finally by remembering that reality is not what appears on the screen of their computers, but the final parts to be assembled into a model by a human modeler.

I think that in the same way that photo-etched parts have their place in modeling, but look in some cases unrealistic when entire models are made of them, 3D-printing has a place in the accessories aftermarket. Just recently I bought a 3D-printed stair for a Gulfstream jet model I built that looks quite good, for example.

Now, a high-res printed kit, where those ridges were completely minimized and could disappear under a few coats of primer and paint, with good transparencies, good decals, sensible engineering and well researched, would be something that surely many modelers would support.

Are 3D-printed full kits the way of the future? I honestly don't think so, but they seem to be making a niche for themselves along the other media, and you can see a number of them built on the Net, if with varied results, depending as always on kit and modeler. Many hurdles were encountered during the build, as you may read in the building posting, so I deem this kit (and similar offerings) as suitable for the more experience modeler, resourceful and patient enough to sort out the many issues of this type of kits as they are today. I do love, though, the wide array of very interesting and appealing civil subjects they offer, and only wish the quality would be better.

So far, I don't see any great advantages in 3D-printed kits, as their standards are below of what a good vac, resin, or injected kit could offer, which relegates 3D to the occasion when no one else would produce the plane you want in a better medium, or, as mentioned before, when you are not expecting much of a kit, other than represent more or less the plane you like. The unusual amount of time spent on this kit, and the many necessary corrections, additions and adjustments, decided me to give this medium a pass for now. Time will tell if this 3D fad has a future that puts its products on par with other media. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Note: the decal set for the specific plane replicated here was commissioned from Arctic Decals in Finland.

P/S: nice colors, by the way... they remind me of certain valiant country now under unprovoked attack and invasion by a despicable clown, "friend" of the one we used to have here.