It arrived this morning
Fist impressions are good.
Nor sure how the detail measure up yet but it looks like a Carvair. Someone mentioned on a review it was a modified DC 6 kit but I've not checked the engines yet. The props and tailplane are C-54/DC 4 but Roden do not make one. Perhaps they will.
Compared to the Minicraft kit of the C-54 it is a bit chunkier...but nothing that can't be put right if wrong and certainly better than the F-RSIN Resin fuse to be used with the Minicraft, although that does come with a seperate front door and a ramp. The Braz Injection moulded conversion has interior details but no ramp.
It does contain the three modern horrors...a cockpit hood containing the roof and windows which means to be accurate you have to paint the inside to match the outside and then you still don't have a solid thickness. By far, the older method of a slot is better as individual bars can be added with sprue strips and glazed.
The second horror is indented panel pines where in reality raise is far more accurate to show seams and strips.
the third is the unforgivable trend of sold fuse with decal windows. No kit produced like this can be deemed accurate, they look awful and those that like decaled windows, mainly because they find it easier could fill window openings, this way they have to be cut out. A point missed is real windows are not flush but recessed slightly and this never looks good. if they gave decals of windows that look like windows then maybe not so bad but solid shapes will not do and the make them light on dark decals which is even worse.
This kit does have the doors scribe which is good as the modern tendency is to have decaled outlines meaning doors are clearly visible on liveries where in real lif they were invisible to a great extent.
The Braz conversion has an interior but what good is that without windows and that does not have them either. Maybe they don't realise the windows go straight through

.
The things I mention are more concessions to ease of construction and models that look how folk seem to think they should without modelling to how the real thing looked.
I'd like to make this one up in the 1960's BUAF livery and it can sit at Southend along with a DC 4 made up as Channels Airways G-ARYY...the Carvair that never was as Channel bought it for conversion but ATL would not at that time covert DC 4's so it lived at Southend as a 88 seater mainly on the Ostend shuttle.
However, I am pleased and details will no doubt show themselves, but, if you grabbed it and stuck it together as it comes out of the box...even it there were issues with engines and other details nothing confirmed yet, as it is, made up, it will look just like a Carvair.
Who'd ever think there would be an injection moulded Carvair
