ITALERI 1:72 YF-23 BLACK WIDOW

Reviewer: Myself  (braithy@bigpond.com)

The YF-23 is a joint design by the Northrop and McDonnell Douglas companies to become the Advanced Technology Fighter beyond the end of this century - also known as the Fourth Generation of Fighters.  The YF-23 was competing for the ATF production line to succeed the F-15's in the US Air Force Inventory against the Lockheed/Boeing/GD design YF-22 Lightning. Unfortunately for the YF-23, its competitor won the competition and now it is destined a place in history as a prototype failing to win the assignment.   According to the so-called experts, the YF-23 - unofficially named the "Black Widow" - is by all means a superb aircraft and it appears a shame that the aircraft may become another would-be design destined as a museum showpiece.  Perhaps the Northrop company may find success later as it did with the YF-17 Cobra that also lost it's competition against the YF-16 lightweight fighter (ironically to one of the parties it competes against this time - GD) to later be developed into the very successful F/A-18 Hornet. Whatever is there further down the track, the YF-23 will no doubt continue test flying for development of the next prototype, whenever that may be.

Italeri have engineered this kit with nice light grey, crisp injected molded parts with quite reasonable detail.  Main lines are etched (flaps etc) with the panel lines raised.  A few ejector pin marks are evident, mainly on the undercarriage and missiles - nothing too drastic,  but annoying nonetheless.   Two sprues of about 35 parts and a clear sprue containing the two-piece canopy and HUD are included.  The kit emanates a crispness and very nice quality about it and the first you thing you think is, hell this will take only a few minutes to put together!   The fuselage is split horizontally in two halves that include the wings molded on.   Apart from the cockpit and tail fins it looks like you are only going to have to assemble the undercarriage, doors and weapon bay.  It really looks a zinch.  It turns out to be - 'yes and no'! 

The instruction sheet is basically a fold-out strip similar to Hasegawa's universally recognised sheets (but a bit larger) and contains relatively straight forward steps to make the aircraft. Emphasis placed on "relatively" mind you.  A diagram of the sprues, a brief historical paragraph (that talks in the 'present' fashion indicating that Italeri engineered this kit while the YF-23 was still in flight trials with the YF-22 - and thus explains a few anomolies later) and paint references for the ModelMaster/Italeri range - FS numbers also supplied where possible.

Construction, as always, starts with the cockpit and this is very nicely detailed.  The seat has to be assembled with raised knobs on the side arms - nice - but I found it rather difficult to get a perfect alignment.  It seemed that the right arm-rest was not properly molded to fit. The seat is placed into a 'bath tub' that has the whole side panels brimming with raised knobs and switches - again nice.  A lovely and realistic looking control stick and instrument panel is attached to the unit in front of the seat, the console having raised dials and guages.  No pilot figure supplied.   This bath unit gets attached to the inside of the upper fuselage half and a bit of filler was needed to block out the gaps either side against the walls.  I'm not sure if this would have mattered later on but it was only a minor and easy job to do, so better safe than sorry.

The intakes were a bit shallow and the instructions are a bit vague to the exact positioning so some common sense and improvisation was needed.  Essentially you attach a floor and back wall of the intake and as mentioned it is very shallow, the whole interior easily visible when viewed from front on.  Unfortunately I do not have a reasonable enough reference photo to check this out so I have to rely on Italeri's reproduction.  Like the cockpit, the floor/wall left a slight gap so this was filled from behind and not sanded (a bit too difficult to get in there, because you essentially make a 'box') since the area filled from behind would not be visible - only what appears through the small gap.  In the same step it says to paint the rear exhaust exit which are inscribed with raised detail lines (like a brick wall) on the inside of the bottom fuselage half.  This is fine, but bear in mind the exhausts sit further in than where these 'brick-wall' like lines end, so remember to paint further in so you don't have a 'space' that hasn't been painted when you look into the exhaust tubes. 

At this stage I realised that this was no "five-minute" or shake the box and the kit will make itself job.  This was also going to be further verified later on.  Before joining the fuselage halves you need to paint the interior exhaust exit tube plus encase the exhausts themselves.  The kit calls for Metalizers Exhaust and Titanium in the ModelMaster range. I just couldn't work out what these were in Humbrol, I ended up using some gunmetal and darkened aluminium that seemed to look quite good when they were encased.  The instructions call for 20g of weight in the nose - if you have been reading my reviews on this website you will no doubt know that most of my kits are replicated in flying configuration (just a preference) so I dispensed with this and found no problems at the end but it's clear weight is needed for wheels-down models.   The fuselage halves join together easily providing care was noted, but still needed some well positioned wooden pegs to keep the halves nicely together as a few areas were all too willing to separate if left to its own devices.  One peg on each wingtip, nose and a few positioned at the end of the tail/exhaust pipes plus a rubber band behind the cockpit and wings did the job nicely. 

Once dry, the extra work started because as mentioned above the wings are molded on with the lower section affixing inside the upper section when the fuselage halves were joined.  Unfortunately this left quite a gap where the lower/upper wing portions met and a substantial amount of putty was used to hide this gap.  This was pretty easy to do but extended the time consuming process of getting this 'five minute' kit together. 

The kit also includes a bomb bay that can be shown open or closed, but according to the reference material I have, this is actually incorrectly shaped and positioned in the fuselage.  This is further confirmed by a few rms'ers who commented that this part of the kit is quite inaccurate.  Nevertheless, Italeri have done a nice job in detailing this part of the kit, same with wheel wells, as piping and lining are clearly visible.  I painted the interior white with aluminium tubing and displayed the bomb bay open in spite of the concerns about its accuracy.  Four large missiles are provided to attach to a railing system inside the bomb bay (the instructions are a bit vague to how exactly they are positioned on the railing, so test it out first).   Like the wheel well doors, there are attachment railings on the door halves which makes it easy to have the doors in the open position - which is all well and good but if you want them in the closed position (like I did with my flying model's wheel doors) then you have to carefully cut these rails off and dry fit test the doors until they sit right.   The bomb bay doors are not the right shape either and you need to test fit them in the open position until you know which side they go to - the halves have identical numbering parts because initially it's one-piece. The gear doors did not fit perfectly, a touch smaller than the allocated space and more filler was needed to hide the gaps.

The tailfins were relatively straightforward to put on but the instructions do not give a good indication as to how they should be positioned, and the alignment pins are flexible to have you sit them at a number of angles.  Reference material was needed here and then they needed to be left with positioning assistance overnight while they dried.  A small gap was visible in the morning and more filler was called upon to plug this up and to help strengthen the construction.  I also used some Zap glue to strengthen the bond because it's easily noted that these fins will snap off with only a little bit of effort. 

Other than that all the parts fitted (I actually typed "farts pitted" before spotting on a proof-read!!) well.  The canopy can be positioned open or closed with instructions devoting a small step to each.  The only problem was trying to work out where a panel (35b) is supposed to fit inside the closed canopy.   The instructions looked well defining but couldn't translate this to the actual spot inside the canopy and cockpit and it didn't fit!  I ended up leaving it out (because it would more or less be invisible anyway once the area is painted over).   The canopy is very shiny, and reminds me of the first roll out of an F/A-18(B) here in Australia - an absolute shiny and almost magnifying projection.  Very nice.

The kit allows you to produce either the first or second prototype with an overall dark gunship grey (FS 36118) and a combined Dark Tan (FS 30219)/Light Ghost Gray (FS 36375) respectively.  Decals are supplied for whichever version you choose to build.  I chose the first prototype and initally thought that the colour call out was too dark but after talks with some rms'ers and using some pastels for weathering it turns out to be perfect.  Decals are good quality with one inaccuracy noticed:   Four "YF-23" and "ATF" strip decals are correctly supplied for the inner and outer sides of the tail fin but only two "AF800" decals are supplied for the outer sides.  Pictures of the aircraft reveal that this serial number also appeared on the inner sides of the tail fin (as also clearly seen in the picture below).  I also spotted some scribing either side of the forward fuselage to not match up exactly in line with each other.

In model form the YF-23 measures up well within a millimetre or two of the scaled dimensions according to my reference source. Inaccuracies include the bomb bay position and shape as mentioned (although not a lot of difference) and where the tail fin meets the fuselage. Photos clearly show a join that is a bit rounded before straigthening up with a slight angle, whereas the model is basically a straight join and the difference is clearly noticed when compared.  I'm not convinced that the aerials are well portrayed and correctly positioned on the fuselage either.  And the other concern being the omission of the serial number on the inner fin sides. 

Overall this is quite a nice kit and I would still highly recommend it - the only other kit production I know is a DML YF-23 which is more inaccurate than this one (supposedly).  It's not a five minute job as what you might have expected when opening the box although all the parts fit easily, they are nearly all differing slightly in size and filler is needed.  The model is also quite light and really feels a bit brittle in the hands - it's hard to handle by virtue of its shape - and one gets the feeling that a bit too much pressure will ruin this kitwork, a bit more easily than your average kit.  Strengthen up the fins a bit or they will snap off easily, a bit of filler, a bit of Zap and some painting and gloss overcoat will do the trick nicely.   I'd also suggest using primer on the model first even if you give it a wash, the overall dark grey paint was very cooperative on primed surface.  While it's still a very nice kit, I just get the feeling that Italeri have jumped into this subject material a little too quickly and didn't get it 100% right as a consequence. Nevertheless I'd still buy another one and it should suit all modelmaking experience levels.

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The same YF-23 first prototype which the Italeri tries to replicates, and does quite well
The AF800 decals visible on the inside of the tailfins in the above picture are not supplied in the kit, which
only supplies two of these decals for the outside/facing down section on either tailfin.