Full disclosure: A couple of years back, I participated in an on-line debate about the practicality of the model industry bringing out a new-tool 1/72 scale C-130 Hercules. I opined that a new state-of-the-art kit couldn’t be made that would retail for less than a hundred dollars. And at that price or higher, it would be difficult to sell enough units to earn a profit for the company. It seemed to me that the potential market had been saturated with Airfix, Italeri, and ESCI kits produced over the last five decades. I was wrong. Leave it to the Russians to teach me a lesson in Capitalist economics!
Although Zvezda has been around for years, this is their first 1/72 scale kit of a U.S. military aircraft, providing me with my first opportunity to build one of their kits. Nutshell analysis: Wow!
With 275 parts spread through nine sprues, the project isn’t terribly difficult. All parts feature fine recessed panel detail. The distribution of the parts on different sprues indicates that several more variants of Lockheed’s venerable Herc are built into the molds. In fact, Zvezda has announced plans for stretched C-130J next year.
The kit comes with an adequate amount of interior detail on the flight deck with three crew figures. The cargo cabin has a full-length floor and the sidewalls have molded-in ribs. Parts for various panels, piping, and equipment are molded separately, as are lengths of folded-up canvas seats. You must remove about 35mm from the forward ends of two side panels and the piping structure at the ceiling. This must be part of the 15-foot fuselage extension of the C-130J-30.
The kit’s instructions are excellent but suggest only Tamiya paint numbers. One little hitch: The instructions mix up the numbers and misrepresent the size and positions of the circuit-breaker decals on the flight deck. The correction will become obvious as soon as you start to apply those decals.
You have several choices of optional exterior parts, so pay attention to the instructions. There are two options for a pair of inserts for the forward fuselage, four choices of the small vertical cockpit windows, rear fuselage sponson panels with and without RATO racks, early and late elongated forward-sponson ends, two different paratroop doors, three nose cones, two beaver tails, two upper domes, and a refueling probe for the Royal Air Force version. The kit provides slightly flattened wheels that are keyed to their axles. The loading ramp can be posed open, but there are no positive locating devices at the forward end. I just applied liquid cement to the point where the ramp touched the bottom of the fuselage and let it set. The drive-up ramps are beveled and touch the “ground” perfectly.
There are 17 parts for each engine nacelle; most of the interior detail in the nacelles can’t be seen easily, but all of it fits! The prop blades are molded separately but are keyed to fit into the spinners.
Overall, fit was excellent, and I used just a little filler along the seams between the fuselage halves.
I chose to paint the model overall with Tamiya spray can neutral gray (AS-7); I felt it close enough to the proper Air Mobility Gray (FS36173). Two decal sheets provide markings for a C-130H of the Oklahoma Air National Guard, along with markings for RAF, Japanese, South Korean, and Polish Air Force Hercs. The decals are thin and a bit stretchy, so be careful. I decided to cut away the large areas of clear film between the wing walks, fearing “silvering” would mar the overall look of the model. But with some Solvaset and hot air from a hairdryer, the decals settled properly. I overcoated them with Gunze Mr. Color semigloss clear.
Man, I am impressed! Building Zvezda’s Herc didn’t take long; just 26 hours, with about half of that for paint and decals. I look forward to building more, especially the C-130J-30 stretch. Now, if I can just convince Zvezda we Americans could use a good C-141 Starlifter!