Revell C-45F Expeditor 1:48

Ref: 03966
Review by Geoff Coughlin (January 2016)
Price around: £16.99 GBP

Our thanks to Revell for supplying our review sample. Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For details visit www.revell.de/en

The Beechcraft Model 18 (or “Twin Beech”, as it is also known) is a six to 11-seat, twin-engined, low-wing, tailwheel light aircraft manufactured by the Beech Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. Continuously produced from 1937 to November 1969, (over 32 years, the world record at the time), over 9,000 were produced, making it one of the world’s most widely used light aircraft. Sold worldwide as a civilian executive, utility, cargo aircraft, and passenger airliner on tailwheels, nose wheels, skis or floats, it was also used as a military aircraft.

During and after World War II, over 4,500 Beech 18s saw military service—as light transport, light bomber (for China), aircrew trainer (for bombing, navigation and gunnery), photo-reconnaissance, and “mother ship” for target drones, including United States Army Air Forc-es (USAAF) C-45 Expeditor, AT-7 Navigator, AT-11 Kansan; and United States Navy (USN) UC-45J Navigator, SNB-1 Kansan, and others. In World War II, over 90% of USAAF bombardiers and navigators trained in these aircraft.

In the early postwar era, the Beech 18 was the pre-eminent “business aircraft” and “feeder airliner.” Besides carrying passengers, its civilian uses have included aerial spraying, sterile insect release, fish seeding, dry ice cloud seeding, aerial firefighting, air mail delivery, ambu-lance service, numerous movie productions, skydiving, freight, weapon- and drug-smuggling, engine testbed, skywriting, banner towing, and stunt aircraft. Many are now pri-vately owned, around the world, with over 300 in the U.S. still on the FAA Aircraft Registry in December 2014

The Revell Kit

I remember seeing this kit when it was available under the ICM range back in 2014 and have always considered it an absolute classic shape and indicative of it’s time.

Here’s a photo of the manufacturer’s completed model – more to follow at the end of this piece.

Any of you who have built models from the ICM kit range will know that as a rule they are great builds, well detailed and fit of parts is usually great too – what’s not to like? Well, that’s the case here as ICM have co-operated with Revell and supplied their C-45F Expeditor kit with Revell adding a new and attractive decal sheet plus new-style instructions.

Box and contents

Still the same rather flimsy boxes, but good artwork makes the attractive nonetheless.

Let’s go inside

Well moulded light grey sprues supplied and taking the main components first, they are well tooled, smooth finish typical of the type with fine raised detail and good levels of other de-tail across the board. No distortion on the main parts is apparent and a dry fit of the fuse-lage sections suggests a decent fit; the initial impression is one of detail parts that will go to make up a nice representative model in 1:48 scale. No real evidence of excess flash on the parts supplied in this kit.

Cockpit and interior

This is a WWII era machine and interior detail is inevitably simple and restrained. What there is as you will see from the photos is authentic and nicely done. Decals for main in-strument panel and seat harness should be perfectly adequate given that you won’t see a lot in through the canopy windscreen.

Plenty of seat for the rear hold are supplied and these will add just enough to make this ar-ea look busy. You can always add your own stowage or some figures perhaps from your spares box?

Other observations

• undercarriage units are well detailed and the tyre tread pattern will look good under painting and basic weathering
• wing elevators are supplied as separate parts
• engine is sufficiently well detailed to create enough interest for many of you but there is good scope to add some engine ignition wires to the engine faces to lift them a little.

Clear parts

The clear parts look clear and defect-free.

Instructions

The Revell instructions look rather different this time – colour would you believe! Location of parts is clear but colour paint coding is for Revell paints only. You’ll have to match your own choice of paints if you go elsewhere for your choice of colour. The build sequence is pretty standard and logical but many modellers will part company with the stated order to suit their experience.

The back of the box has additional colour and painting guidance and all in all the instructions are definitely a step forward for Revell over their pretty basic instructions included so far.

Decals

Options for two aircraft is included:
• UC-45F Expeditor, 2nd Electronics Squadron, USAF Olmsted Field, PA., 1948
• Expeditor C.II, Naval Air Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, Hal far, Malta, September 1949

Conclusion

This is a great subject and it’s good to have the C-45 readily available in 1:48 scale. This model will provide all military fans, especially those with an interest in WWII aircraft and civilian versions of the aircraft with a great new addition to their collection.
The model itself looks to be well engineered from the dry/test-fit. Moulding is good and the detail ok in my opinion.
Geoff C.

SMN Quick summary Star rating out of 5