Introduction

Produced by the Dutch, the F27 Friendship was one of the most manufactured aircraft in the Netherlands after World War 2, and came to be one of the more successful commercial airliners in Europe. The aircraft was designed in the 1950’s using the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop engines. It began commercial passenger service with airlines like Braathens SAFE and Luxair in Europe, as well as Trans Australia, Turkish Airlines, and others.

The F27 Friendship also saw military service, and through a license with Fiarchild in the US as a C-31A with the US Army Golden Knights paratroop team.

A new 1/72 scale kit from Italeri, based on the 1991 Esci/Ertl kit, includes new decals and could be an interesting subject to model.

Contents

4 Plastic sprues
1 Clear plastic sprue
1 Large Sheet decals
1 Instruction booklet

Review

Opening this kit from Italeri of the Fokker F27 Friendship I was pleasantly surprised. The kit molded in white plastic look pretty nice. It has engraved panel lines, maybe a little bigger then we see on some the more modern kits, but for kit first released in 1991, it looks decent. The rest of the molding are not that bad looking either. It may not be up to the standards we are seeing today, but it does look good. The kit does have a little bit of flash on some of the parts, which looks easy to clean up, and there are ejector marks on the interior surfaces, again easy to resolve. I also did spot a couple of sink marks, mostly on the landing gear, but again easy to deal with.

This kit from Italeri does have a full interior, while not detailed the best, it is there. As mentioned there are some ejector marks showing, including on the bulk heads, but a little putty and sanding should clear that up. And the windows on the sides are not all that large, so it is not like the interior will be pronounced on the build. The cockpit is a little plain, but again small windows.

The real big drawback I see on detail it the lack of detailing on the engine nacelles, especially the front intakes of the tubroprops and the inside of the wheel wells. Without looking I am not sure if there is any aftermarket details out there, but that would help.

The clear plastic looks good and clear. The passenger windows are some individual and some in a strips and are installed from the interior, so there will be some extra masking required. But these should add to the look of the kit when built, with a little view of the interior. Also the rear doors are separate and the front door provides the wider cargo option. This would be handy if doing a military build, but would require some scratch building on the interior. It should also be noted that before you put the fuselage halves together you will need to add some weight at the front to keep the nose down.

As for painting and markings, the instruction include paint call outs with a color name, and I can only presume the number are Italeri paint numbers, but it is not stated. The color and marking options are included for three civilian schemes:

• G-BDDH Air UK, Londra-Southend Airport, 1985
  
• N278MA Canyon Eagle Airlines, Las Vegas Mc Carran International Airport, 1998
  
• PH-SAD Schreiner Airways, Amsterdam Airport, 1966
  

The decals themselves look to be very well printed with nice color. Some are rather large, so care will be needed with applying them, but should make any finish build look great.

Conclusion

Overall, this boxing of the Fokker F27 from Italeri does not look too bad for an older mold. The kit does have some short coming, but nothing that cannot be overcome with some basic modeling skills. And I am totally sure some experienced modeler will be able to make a masterpiece from this with a little work and scratch building. Also as the kit does look relatively straight forward, could be a good entry level kit for a builder who is not expecting a lot of details. As there are some aftermarket decals on the market, even building a military variant is not out of the question. I would recommend this kit, it could be a lot of fun.