Grumman S-2E Tracker

by Fotios Rouch

Grumman S-3E Tracker

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The Tracker has served a long service history with many countries, yet there is still no model of this significant aircraft in 1/48 scale.

The 1/72 scale Hasegawa kit was nice for its time but it looks dated by today's standards. Dynavector announced a plan to make the F variant and I am happy to wait until then. However, if you want the longer fuselage S-2E, the last variant of this plane, Collect-Aire is the only game in town.

This is one of Collect-Aire's latest and greatest releases. The kit is molded in the US by a very nice resin shop that has its own line and provides parts for other makers too.

The parts of my example were completely devoid of warpage and had very few bubbles or pinholes. The surface detail is exquisite and the engraving is on par with any injection molded kit of recent memory.

Assembly is very straight forward.

The kit includes a reasonable front cockpit that looks pretty close to the cockpits that I have in pictures and flight manuals for the F variant. Some modifications are necessary to make the E variant cockpit but very little will show on the finished kit.

There is a torpedo bay with some detail present and a torpedo is included. I cannot vouch for accuracy there since I have never seen this bay open myself.

The front wheel well is nicely detailed but the main ones will benefit from some added detail if you are planing to display your model on top of a mirror.

I pre shaded the model before painting and also used pastels at the end to accent some areas. The decals went on great and they were of high quality.

A very nice kit from my favorite Russian maker.

Recommended to those with some resin experience and to those who are not willing to wait for ever for some injection company to take a crack at it.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Article Copyright © 2002 by Fotios Rouch
Page Created 22 January 2002
Last updated 04 June 2007

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