Minicraft Piper Cherokee Airplane Model Kit (1/48 Scale)

Excelente

I’ve ordered about 3 of these and I honestly have a great time putting them together. I made a replica of my CFI’s favorite Pa28 and he loved it. The only issue I have with this model is it won’t balance correctly on its stand. It’s tail heavy.

If you are an owner of a Piper Cherokee you can build and paint this to look like your own. You can order letters and numbers decals on Amazon to create your own registration number. Very easy build.

This made a great gift for my father. He loved the model and reminded him of this childhood. I was happy to find it online and for such a great price. Shipped fast and packaging was not damaged.

I ordered this for my father, who owned a Piper Cherokee in the 1980's. It was $24.99, and for that amount, I expected a much nicer product. Very cheap and thin plastic parts, and he had to make his own windshield when part of that split taking it apart from other components. I was very disappointed in the quality.

I bought this kit because I have fond memories of flying with my dad in the one he rented when I was a kid. I'm building the kit as a gift to him for his 77th birthday next week and have put in probably about 30 hours on the kit. I'm an experienced builder, having built models from early elementary school through college (and in fact built one of these Piper kits back when I was a young kid,) and then I took a break and started building again after about 15 years. I'm a much better modeler now than I ever was, but I have lower tolerance for shoddy kits, and this is, unfortunately, kind of a shoddy kit. With a lot of work, it comes out decent, but some things may hold it back from being great without resorting to building your own parts to compensate for what this kit lacks. In my case, I opted to add seat belts made out of masking tape just because the cockpit looks weirdly blank without them.This kit was originally released back in 1973 so the model it represents is no later than that, and this kit shows its age. While the basic shape of a Cherokee 140 is here, there are fit issues due to aging molds and even some spots where the plastic didn't completely fill the mold. It is a kit that is technically buildable by a less experienced builder because it's really pretty simple, but the more experienced builder will spend a lot of time attempting to compensate for the deficiencies.Problem areas I've encountered:1. Engine fit - the frame that the tiny motor mounts to was warped a bit in my kit and, not having any frame of reference to go by, I simply had to make do and make it fit. The pegs on the legs of that frame wouldn't align properly and in one case, the leg simply was too short.2. Cowling fit - to make matters worse, the cowling doesn't fit well at all, with large, uneven gaps between the fuselage and the cowling edge, and fit issues that are also due to the poor fit of the engine. I scraped out what I could of the inside of the cowling and shaved off unseen parts of upper portion of the engine that was causing me problems, and glued the cowling to the fuselage rather than have it removable. The engine's nothing special to look at anyway, so it's no big deal.3. Tapered tail - the long, thinning leading edge of the tail should make a sharp point where it joins the fuselage, but on the starboard side, the plastic failed to fill the mold there, leaving an ugly, misshapen end. I filled this with Perfect Plastic Putty and sanded to shape.4. Gaps (everywhere) - point somewhere on this kit: there's a gap. Again, this goes back to the old molds showing their age. Some are lesser than others, others will require significant work with fillers. I don't know if the plastic is particularly thin or what, but I've split the seam for the halves of the wings numerous times, including after applying a final coat of gloss white and beginning detailing. It's flimsy, I guess. I thought ahead and crafted a strengthener for the long empty part of the fuselage that I thought might suffer this fate and it's been fine, but didn't realize the wings could use some support inside too. So heed my warning and put some solid plastic supports in the wings to keep them from flexing so much.5. Windows - another fit issue. The windows don't line up with the openings in the fuselage resulting in a very sloppy fit. Because the side windows curve not just up but back, I don't know how to remedy this in a relatively quick manner. The windscreen is a bit small to match up exactly to the frame, too. The plastic used here is pretty thick so seeing through to the interior is kind of like looking in a fun-house mirror.Other areas of concern: if you're trying to make an accurate cockpit, you're in for a lot of work. The yokes are badly shaped and very thick, with an off-center column. If it wasn't something I was working on, it would be comical because they look like they were very hastily put together from scrap pieces of plastic. There's very little detail overall in the cockpit, but due to the thick plastic windows, it might not mean much. My tip: paint the windows black or, at least, tint them dark if you want to be able to get a see-through feel without being able to see the "details" inside. Various areas of the kit that should be smooth are marred by weird lumps, as if the mold had been gouged and never fixed. Most of this concerns the cowling but the nose piece, propeller nose cone, and wheel housings also suffer this problem. Speaking of the nose: the openings for air circulation are laughably shaped. They're just kind of warped rectangles that bear no resemblance to the very noticeable openings on the real plane. You will need to reshape these openings to make that distinctive shape. Luckily, the openings presented in the kit are too small, so removing plastic to do this won't require too much work. Decals are fine, if basic, and don't necessarily represent the paint scheme of very many planes (and specifically not the plane I flew in, so I will be painting that myself.) There aren't enough numbers to create a tail number that has repeated numbers, something else I will need to create myself for the particular plane my dad flew. They're also only in black, so if you are modeling a plane that had color-coordinated tail numbers, you're out of luck.It's a sloppy kit of a fond memory in my life so I am pushing through. It makes a decent display model that looks good from a couple feet back but suffers from its problems up close.

Fun project

Serious fit issues with the molded pieces meant extra sanding and lots of putty needed. The engine mount piece came broken, with half missing - I had to cobble bits together from the frame the parts shipped in.