Grumman Widgeon - Civil conversion of KP 1/72nd kit.

Seaplanes, flying boats, and amphibians are cherished subjects among modelers. On this blog you can see many models of them from resin, vacs and injected kits. The Grumman planes have pleasant lines and nice stories behind them. I was in fact looking for a kit of the Goose to fulfill the desire of modeling one that flew to Catalina Island, a beautiful place I can see from my window. On that search, by chance, I came across the Widgeon in the form of the relatively (in more than once sense) new KP kit. This is promoted as “new, 2024 kit”, but in fact -as noted by many already- is a slight revamp of the Pavla kit, with some things changed. This is your typical short run kit, I have seen better and worse in this media; nothing that a good cleaning session won’t fix, and surely a bit of scratch to improve a few things wouldn’t hurt. I have built a number of KP kits; I generally like them, and am familiar with the work they required (some more than others). Here are some KP kits I have built, as an example of what you can do and what you can expect:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/03/miles-m2h-kovozavody-prostejov-172nd.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2017/06/kp-172nd-avia-bh-11-boska-completed.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2019/01/hillson-praga-e114b-kp-172-completed.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2019/01/de-havilland-dh88-comet-kp-172-completed.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/05/sopwith-scooter-modified-kovozavody.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2021/03/cessna-bobcat-civil-pema-enlo-argentina.html

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2022/11/miles-m38-messenger-kp-172nd.html

The sprues exhibit the predictable flash and a few small masses of unwanted plastic, but the panel lines are fair, and there is some detail for the cockpit and landing gear. The cabin is void of detail save a floor. As I am converting this kit to a civil plane, seats will need adding, military bits discarded, a few details enhanced or changed, and a new decal set required. The props are not good, chunky and blobby, and in any case I have to replace them for scratch-built Hartzell ones. The landing gear parts could have been sharper. The inst. pan. is surprisingly detailed. The kit lacks the chin flanges that avoid excessive water spray; these will have to be also fabricated. The instructions are not bad, but are too small for most of what they try to depict, unclear at times and with a few mistakes. I intend to open the fuselage access hatch, which is small but may still show a bit of the interior. As there is no aftermarket Ranger L-440 engine, nacelles this time will remain closed, although the kit offers a first cylinder view. As we all know, this type of kit uses just butt-joints, some of which (horizontal tailplanes, for example) you may like to reinforce with a metal pin. All contact surfaces should be trued as they have imperfections that hinder the fit, but without removing excessive material, which would also affect the fit.

KP offers in some of its boxings a few civil schemes, but the plane I want to represent was from the Fish and Wildlife Service of the USDI (United States Department of the Interior) in its blue-black and orange scheme.  Some time ago I modeled another USDI plane, A Republic Seabee:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/07/republic-seabee-highly-modified-mach-2.html

This type of government agencies, that for the benefit of us all and our future generations manage resources, environment, wildlife and other important areas, shouldn't be tamper with by people who don't have the will -not to mention the skills or qualifications- to support them or make them better. Cutting their funding, firing their employees, curtailing their functions, only damages the whole country, its resources and population. This may not be noticed immediately, but surely the impact will be felt, sometimes in irreparable ways, down the lane.

The plane I am representing did have the longer distance -measured from the nose- to the hull step, as does the kit, fortunately.

Not the sharpest molding, but after cleaning it should do:

The mass balances for the elevators are perhaps better refined or replaced by home-made items:

Excrescences need cleaning:

The second tree:

Not the most wonderful props I have seen:

The top of the wing should be straight flat. This needs fixing:

Instructions. Well, on the bright side... the kit has them. Too small drawings at several stages to provide precision and clarity, and a couple of mistakes:

The sprues are washed and let dry, parts separation and cleaning commences. This involves remove the sprue gates and ejector towers, thinning the trailing edges from inside in the case of the wings, removing the flash and mold seams, etc. All what you would expect from a short-run kit. 

As the float struts intrude a bit on the gluing edge, you have to prepare the other side in order to have a good fit...

...by marking and very slightly carving notches to accept the intruding strut ends:

Then you will have a good fit; otherwise, the imprecision of the molding will pull the upper seam apart:

Once you have advanced with the build, beware that there are some parts that need to be installed before closing the fuselage sides: predictably the inst. pan. and cockpit + cabin, but also the two parts that blank from inside the wheel wells, and a so-called "plastic plate" in the instructions, which is not a part, but you will need to scratch (no pattern or measures provided) in order to support the tail wheel. The kit provides what it looks like a throw-over or single control wheel, but photos mostly show a double control wheel arrangement.
Parts 27 (airscoops) are very poor, and can be substituted.

The trailing edges are carefully thinned down:

The backing parts of the wheel wells are glued, as well as the float halves:

The scratched part needed to support the tailwheel is glued in place. The engine nacelles halves are glued:

The wing sections are glued together, after "flattening" the spurious dihedral of the top part:

The cabin door is marked:

And carefully removed using rotary tool bits. A new door will be made from styrene sheet:

Ejector pin towers are removed. The vertical tail trailing edge is thinned down:

Part 38, the tailwheel, is correctly depicted in the sprue map but incorrectly (and much better detailed than in reality) in the assembly drawings.

Although the nacelles have the furrows for the exhaust pipes, none whatsoever are provided with the kit or depicted in the instructions... UNLESS: parts 19, which are in the parts map, are the REAL exhausts. The part described is also 19 in the assembly drawings, obviously the LG leg, IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND....BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY PART OF THE LEG (part 20), AND NOT TWO PARTS AS DEPICTED IN THE ASSEMBLY DRAWING. Sigh...way to go, KP.

Parts 26 and 27 (another small top exhaust and air scoop) are just solid little chunks of plastic, and need hollowing to be realistic.

A dry run shows that the fuselage fit is fair:

Two structural parts and an aft bulkhead are also added to the interior. The image shows the corrected upper wing surface:

Some base colors are applied. The floor is wood in most photos (oil streaks will do the job). As I am not sure which seats I would use, I painted several of them:

I see online that the Pavla kit has resin parts. Those would have been welcome here to account for those exhausts and airscoops (that I manage to carefully drill on both sides and make a depression at the end in the case of the small dorsal exhausts) also the LG legs and mass balances. Concurrently, photo-etched parts would have been ideal for those LG scissors, poorly rendered in plastic. Now, this KP kit is supposed to be a step upwards from the original Pavla kit, may be it is in a couple aspects (injected transparencies instead of vac ones, for example), but many things were better in the Pavla kit, to start with, the instructions. The floor of cockpit and cabin were one continues part, and Pavla did include the back bulkhead. Pavla's LG had two more detail parts and also detailed other things that the KP kit missed. So as it is, the KP kit is neither fish nor fowl. Again, not a bad kit by any means, and a not unfair example of the genre, but leaves you wanting in a few regards, and wondering about that claim of "New 2024 kit":

BTW, I went online to see if I could get a Sword Grumman Goose, now OOP. It is sold for absolutely outrageous and ridiculous high prices ($140 and more). Well, kit speculators well beyond fairness, you can certainly keep them under your mattresses... until a new kit comes on the market and you have to liquidate those "my preciousssss" ones for coins.

After a little bit of huffing n' puffing I managed to clean the kit's elevator mass balances, but nonetheless I made my own, as their "stalks" were in reality longer:

The cabin door is fabricated. I should have done this before and paint the inner part together with the interior, but it will be done in the next painting session:

Meanwhile, making a note of the missing rudder horn, nav lights, and to fabricate a new lens for the wing light. The antenna will need rigging, and a directional finder loop has to be scrounged from the spares bin or made. Also the kit's side windows of course have pronounced optical deformities, so it's perhaps better to replace them with home-made acrylic ones. The instrument panel proved to be a good fit, which is almost a miracle in this type of kit.

 To be continued...