The F-35A is the conventional-takeoff (and landing) version of the Joint Strike Fighter derived from the X-35 test vehicle. Just entering the training phase, the new Lightning II could quite possibly be the last manned air-combat vehicle produced in the U.S. as drones take on more missions.
Italeri’s new tooling should not be confused with its previous X-35 kit or with Fujimi’s F-35B STOVL version. Molded in Italeri’s standard soft gray styrene, the parts have good recessed and raised details. Wings are molded with the fuselage in upper and lower halves. These and the engine and afterburner parts are on one sprue, which indicates to me that other versions of the jet may come with alternate fuselage/engine sprues. A full engine is provided, but only the afterburner will be seen. The canopy is molded in clear styrene, but the real ones are tinted.
Another large sprue holds the parts that go into and onto the main assembly. The instructions feature muddy photos of the parts being assembled and don’t clearly show the attachment points of some small parts. You get a pair of 2,000-pound JDAMs and a pair of AIM-120 missiles for the weapons bays.
Assembly starts with internal structures. Each intake is molded in two parts to be placed in the lower fuselage half. The main landing gear fits into separate bays inserted in the fuselage. However the nose-gear bay and weapons bay are molded into the lower fuselage half. This complicates masking.
The cockpit detail is adequate, with a decent ejection seat and separate side-stick control and throttle. The instrument panel and console details are decals of a cursory design; the consoles look like dominos. The instructions tell you to add weight to the nose but not how much. I didn’t think the model needed nose weight, but I added some lead shot and cut off the front two-thirds of the invisible engine just in case.
Overall, fit is good with no filling or sanding. The main assembly problem was the weapons-bay doors. Instructions don’t mention that you can pose the doors closed, though it appears the parts were designed for it. Instead, you’re directed to slice off a small panel on the inboard doors and add hinge arms to both inboard and outboard doors. Neither the doors nor the bays have positive locators for the hinge arms; you have just as good a chance of getting them wrong as getting them right. I suggest gluing the arms to the doors, then adjusting their fit while the cemented joints are still soft by test-fitting them to the shallow depressions in the edges of the bays.
Painting this model is a chore. After painting the gear and weapons bays gloss white, I masked them — not easy at their zigzag edges. Photos of F-35s show a dark gray overall with dozens of zigzag “panels” and edges in a lighter gray. The instructions specify Federal Standard 36118 gunship gray for the darker color, but then suggest “FS36622 flat gull gray” as the lighter — but FS36622 is the almost-white color underneath the U.S. Air Force’s tactical aircraft of the Vietnam era, so that’s wrong. I used FS36231 dark gull gray for the lighter color, which I applied overall for the first coat. I masked all those panel edges with burnished Bare-Metal Foil, cutting around each edge with a sharp blade and removing the excess; it took at least four hours. I wish Italeri had provided decals for these areas. Also, photos show leading and trailing edges and the radome are an even lighter color; I used Testors Model Master FS36251 aggressor gray.
Decals are provided for aircraft of the USAF evaluation and training wings at Nellis and Eglin air force bases, along with provisional national insignia for the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, and Netherlands. The decals went on fine. I found the footprint of the canopy to be a bit smaller than the area that it sits on. I’m not sure if there should be any framing on the clear sensor fairing under the nose, so I left it clean.
It took 31 hours to finish the model, nearly all of it masking and painting. From arm’s length it looks pretty accurate, but then there isn’t a lot of reference information on this aircraft. From the breakdown of the parts, I suspect we’ll be seeing U.S. Marine Corps B and Navy C models soon.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the March 2014 FineScale Modeler.