CAM's ESCAPAC seat comes one to a bagged package in the company's usual light tan polyurethane resin. My sample had chipped canopy breakers.

The casting is free of noticeable pinholes or other flaws, and comes on an easily-removable casting block. Details are good, with nice undercuts in the seat harness. At the risk of sounding repetitious from my other reviews . . . please use a respirator or filter mask when cutting or sanding resin.

A nice touch is the seat safetying handle that pulls down from the center of the headrest. The lumbar pad also has good wrinkle and strap detail, and the rear seat frame is well detailed with the innards of an ESCAPAC.

The problem in using this seat is not CAM's fault - it's a problem of using what is a three-decade-old kit.

The Hasegawa single- and two-seat Skyhawks have a four-piece basic seat - side frames, lumbar cushion/headrest, and the cockpit tub. Yep, you're gonna have to cut the seat cushion out of the cockpit (cockpits if you're doing the TA-4F) and cut a new floorboard to install the seat. A Dremel tool and some jeweler's files come in handy tomake a square hole in the floorboard, and cutting some .020 or .040 styrene to fit is easy enough.

My experience with a pair of CAM ESCAPACs and the TA-4F showed that the front cockpit was a tad tighter that the rear tub when it came to installing the seats. It may have been my fault, but I had to sand a bit of material off the lower sides of the seat for the front office to get a good fit.

Overall, I have to recommend these seats to more experienced modelers, but not because of any inherent fault with CAM's product. Working with older kits means you're going to find odd fits here and there, and until Hasegawa starts updating its Skyhawk molds these seats are still a good way to dress up those kits.

Just be sure to bring along those he-man/she-woman modleing skills!

Mike Still