Scale: 1/48 - about 14"/ 35.6cm long when complete

Parts: 62 resin, vacuform and white metal

Instructions: 11 pages Photographic and written (plus 3 page parts list); adequate. I would have like more technical info.

Decals: ALPS-printed waterslide; generic insignia

Molding Quality: 8 - The major components are all nicely molded, with no air bubbles. Some of the smaller details are attached to fairly heavy resin flash backing, and would be a pain to remove. The thinner resin parts were badly warped.

Detail: 9 - Excellent cockpit, most details are well cast. The panel lines are a bit light.

Accuracy: Not rated - No real solid references. It looks good enough.

MSRP: $95.00 USD ($145.10 CAN/ ~€ 101.73 EUR) available exclusively from the Starship Modeler Store

Overall Rating: 8 - Very good first offering from SSM of an interesting subject.

My Impressions

Image: Port side

Image: Above/right

Image: Underneath, port side

The craft looks like someone put an A-7 Corsair II, and A-10 Thunderbolt II and a Frisbee into a blender and gave it a good stir. From a purely aesthetic and design standpoint; the top half of the ship is very cool, with sleek lines and a coherent design from nose to tail. The bottom half, to my eyes, don't really look like it belongs to the ship. It is blocky and awkward-looking, ending abruptly at the rear and almost spoiling the whole design. In the description provided it says that the Shrike is highly maneuverable; well it doesn't look like it with that big box underneath. It looks more like a bruiser of a ground-attack aircraft that is rugged, packs a wallop, but ungainly. But that's just me. Actually, I would love to build another version WITHOUT the whole bottom fuselage. Hmmm…I wonder if I would get a discount for ordering half a kit…hmmm…

Major Components

The kit is dominated by 2 large and solid resin castings: The sleek upper fuselage, which is very nicely carved; and the boxy lower fuselage which was adapted from a Monogram F-18, complete with the wheel bays. The weapons bays have been integrated with the lower fuselage. The Monogram F-18 also contributed many other detail masters, including the undercarriage, small fins, weapons pylons and other assorted details. The molding quality is excellent on all the major components. I found no bubbles and just a minor mold seam line. My only complaint is that the scribing is too light and tentative. It was difficult to run a wash into them when weathering. The fit of all the major components were very good.

The Intake

The one major component I really did not like is the massive chin intake, which apparently, also holds a pair of short-ranged missile launchers! (The FS-21's designers just failed aircraft design 101! Can you say; massive engine surge and total flame-out?) The part is clunky with a way too-thick lip and doesn't even come close to matching the bottom fuselage contours. The detailing inside is too soft and indistinct for such a large part. This is a problem since it's such a prominent feature of the ship. In hindsight I wish I worked on it some more to improve its shape before I attached it, but I did add a bit more detailing inside.

Undercarraige

Details, details

The stand out in this kit is the very nice cockpit, with Mr. Monogram-generic-jet-jock filling out the human element. All of the details can be seen through the nice, clear and massive vac-formed canopy. The bomb cradle pieces for the weapons bays were attached to a fairly heavy piece of resin backing, and would have been difficult to remove, so I simply ignored them, since I planned to have only one bay opened and the bomb load not extended. The thin parts such as the bay doors and dividing wall were badly warped in my kit, and the bay doors probably would have been better to have been provided as Evergreen styrene stock.

Weapons

The FS-21 is described as having 2 gun bays in the starboard wing, standard fit being a 3-barrelled plasma cannon and a rail-gun. The kit provides the tip of a 6-barrelled gattling-gun, (from the Monogram F-15, I believe,) which doesn't match the described weapons. I decided to put protruding aluminum barrels into both apertures. There are 2 stubby bombs from the old fictional Testors Mig-37 "Russian Stealth" kit, and a pair of very long missiles for the 2 underwing pylons. *Cough*--The less said about these long missiles, the better.

Decals and Painting

The decals have some very cool-looking dragon insignia, I presume representing some kind of clan emblem. They went on without problems. This model offers some real opportunities to flex the creative muscles in terms of painting and finishing.

My Mods

I decided to follow my mind's eye and make the FS-21 as a dedicated heavy-attack craft. It really doesn't look like it can actually dogfight anything! I added an extra set of pylons under the wingtips, and loaded her up for bear with an assortment of heavy bombs and ordnance. I didn't mind using slightly modified current bombs and missiles, since it just seemed logical that aerial free-fall bombs would not change all that much, and it just looked right. I used a pair of more substantial-looking pylons for the inner pair. I ended up using none of the kit's weapons.

I decided to add an array of sensor upgrades to the nose, with very hefty-looking protrusions and housings. This also had the added benefit of drawing attention away from that horrid intake! Finally, I replaced the various molded solid lights (wingtips and fintips) with clear parts, since they were pretty prominent.

Summary