087 Curtiss XP-87 Blackhawk

Dave Burgess Autore
This is the first OLIMP resin kit I've built, and I must say - I'm impressed! There were a fair number of parts, and they were ALL crisply molded with a TON of fine detail. Even the small parts like LG struts were extremely well molded. There was virtually NO warping, a problem I've found with a lot of cast resin kits, particulary large ones. I was initially disappointed seeing a vacuform canopy, as they often don't fit well, and it can be very difficult to mask the frame as it's usually not well defined. However, the fit was very good, and I addressed the frame issue by first creating a frame using masking tape following what I could see of the frame, then masking the glass, before removing the frame tape for airbrushing, One of the really nice things about the vacuformed canopy is how clear the canopy is after a couple of coats of floor wax.

The only flaw I found was that the hor. stab roots seemed to have a small dihedral, in that they fitted flush to the vert. stab with a slight dihedral. It was only after I'd painted the bird and was checking the interwebs for photos, that I realize that the actual a/c had NO dihedral of the hor. stab. However, I wasn't going to try removing them and risk breaking them, so my plane has a slight dihedral of the tail surfaces, All-in-all, a fantastic kit! If the other OLIMP kits are anything like this one, I'm looking forward to it. My next OLIMP kit is the Lockheed XP-58 Chain Lightning

P.S If you're going to build this model, USE LOTS OF NOSEWEIGHT! I thought I'd used enough, but I just barely used enough. With all that resin at the stern of the aircraft, the model is pretty tail heavy. I JUST hit the balance point. If I put it down with the nose wheel touching the surface, it'll stay there, but just a little downforce on the vert.stab, and the model rocks back onto its tail.