P-40B/C Interior Detail Set

Meteor Productions

HyperScale is proudly sponsored by Meteor Productions

As anyone who has built the old Monogram or the more recent Hobbycraft P-40 kits knows, their interiors could certainly use some attention to bring them to life. Scotty B at Meteor has filled this requirement very well with this beautiful interior set designed for the early Tomahawks.

Crisply molded in Cutting Edge's usual sturdy grey resin, the instruction sheet states that it will fit in all early Hawk kits. A dryfit test with a Hobbycraft P-36 I have shows that the interior set is designed more with the Hobbycraft kit in mind; the rear bulkhead matches up fairly well with the headrest support on the kit, whereas there is a gap in this area which needs to be dealt with when using it with a Monogram P-40B. The wall panels have already been measured and mounted into my Monogram kit, and a dryfit of the floor assembly to the taped-up fuselage shows that the fit will be good, with a little adjustment required on each side of the floor to ensure it mates cleanly to the bottom edges of the sidewalls. I did not shave the fuselage walls very thin; I only removed the raised detail, so this small issue may well be resolved by more sanding on the fuselage halves themselves. Please note that the set looks to fit the Hobbycraft P-36 as well, but there would likely be some detail differences (especially with French aircraft) between this and the P-40 series, such as the port side flare cartridge clips.

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The seat is the correct early style with the rounded top and the "dimpled" (for lack of a better term) back; seat belts are molded to the seat, and include shoulder and lap belts. It has been suggested that some AVG Hawks did not have shoulder belts; as I am in no way any kind of Hawk expert, I can only say check your references carefully if this is a concern. I'm leaving mine "as is", as they look great, and I have no intention of screwing up that lovely seat! A quick word about the resin seat frame; this is molded in a resin which is even tougher than CE's usual medium, and it stood up very well to the effort required to remove the flashing around it. I did manage to snap off one of the lower mounting posts, but this was due solely to my repeated hacking at it with the X-acto...

The instrument panel is nicely done, with recessed instruments (with needles...how the heck does he do that?) and will benefit from a careful drybrush session and a drop of clear parts cement or clear epoxy in each instrument face to represent the glass. A curious omission are the two machine gun butts which would be visible in the recesses of the upper instrument panel; photo references would be your best bet to determine whether it would be worth the effort to add these. Also, a first glance seems to reveal no positive mounting method for the panel to fit into the fuselage; however, there are two bare spots on the cockpit walls into which the ends of the lower panel crossbar fit nicely, and the upper back edge of the panel then rests just under the edge of the coaming as per the original unit. Nicely done, Scotty!

Color notes are provided in the instructions, as well as a note regarding gunsights (the Hawks initially were fitted only with a primitive ring and bead setup; quite archaic for a modern six-gun aircraft!).

Overall, this is a great set which will really dress up your early P-40s.

Recommended.

My thanks to Meteor Productions for the review sample.

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