thanks for joining us it right on replicas where we bring you the best scale model kit reviews on the planet this review covers the Revell Stearman aerobatic biplane in 1/48 scale its model kit number 85 - five two six nine built in the 30s over 8,000 of these units were made and you can still find them at small airports all over the place this is a reissue of kit number fifty to sixty four and it's recommended for ages 12 and up it has a piece count of 67 and the kits contents are a couple of bags of screws the fuselage and one with clear parts a great looking decal sheet and a six page instruction sheet now Revell has produced our nice kit with this one with beautiful decals and easy to follow instructions the engine detail is really good it's nicely moulded in six pieces and even though it's not an extensive parts count you get a really good model here for the price a novice builder could also build this as well as the advanced builder making it a base for further construction and detailing finished dimensions of the kit are about 6 and 1/8 inches long four inches high and eight and 3/16 inch wingspan here are the decals for this kit as you can see they're very colorful and the registry is good I strongly recommend using some decal setting solution to make it fit those contours but as always use the manufacturers safety and use guidelines when using any of the products mentioned here in the review for your own protection for most of the construction I use model master liquid cement and sometimes a slow setting to blue but other adhesives are used to for strength like super glue and white glue for clear parts mostly the paints are - my acrylic bottle paints that are shot through an airbrush or rattle-can paints that can be used for things like primers grab these parts out of the kit to start building the frame rail and notice that you've got two seats involved here - which will be installed along with them we'll use these parts to assemble the side controls and front brace for the inner Kage decal 38 and 39 are the first decals you'll add to the kit and they they go on the control panel as you see here with the arrows showing and then you can use the side rails painted interior green and then add the control sticks to it that you see here and I use a white black and red to highlight the knobs and just to steel looking rods for the control sticks now you can add the crossmembers and the other side of the frame rail and here you can see the completed inner frame with an arrow showing the foot pedals it's nice detail and it fits well and notice there are six little mounting tabs on the outside of the completed frame these are going to get it positioned for the fuselage pull out the fuselage halves and doing some good test fitting before you try to glue them together now the outer skin here and the firewall and fire extinguisher will be needed so paint the firewall interior green and at this point paint the interview so Lodge unlike the interior green of the cage it's done in a flat white so let it dry and paint the fire distinguisher wet red well the inner sides of the frame dry mount the fire extinguisher there on the left side and then note the yellow and red arrow is pointing to the framework those are the tabs and they correspond to the black and yellow arrows on the right side fuselage where we'll glue the frame to the fuselage the red in arrows here indicate the glue points on the fuselage halves where you'll install the framework for the interior what's the Blues points in place now assemble the fuselage halves to the frame of the tabs and sockets it's a good design and if you look here you'll see that everything fits flush like frame rails to the top of the fuselage pressing the fuselage halves against the frame you'll see that the front end here notches are very well lined up and they're nice and tight fit also the seam that appears after you get the fuselage halves together is very minimal so it fits very well you can see I had detailed the seatbelts with a little paint and the controls are mounted into the frame for the back seat where the pilot says get these pieces out to assemble the engine mounting frame and paint them an interior green and attach them to the firewall that's already been installed it's straightforward and the mounting holes are already there but note that the round mount has four legs tore shorter than the other so the long ones go to the bottom and the shorter ones are on top here the framework is installed along with the muffler and the support and notice that from the arrows here the red arrow points towards the shorter sticks that are on arm earning rods that are on top and then the black arrow to the longer ones on the bottom grab these parts for the engine and prop and paint the cylinders flat black and the front of the engine is steel color and the prop and the spacer there will be used to trap them into the engine you can print the prop aluminum with a steel hub but we won't be installing that until after we paint the front cowling a dark red to match the decal what's the front lip of the engine Kyle added here you can see that the prop has been put into place and the spacer retaining spacer is assembled behind the engine to keep the whole thing together now we're going to add the instrument decals to the gauge clusters here let's start on the turtle deck next and that houses the gauges for both pilot and the copilot I have a total deck in both gauge clusters here and you can see I flipped them over to show you that how they mount from underneath it's a straight forward tap that slips into the two tabs on the deck marked with red arrows in the next picture so you can see how it should look you're almost self aligning now test fit the turtleneck to the lower frame and get it ready to glue and then use a little glue on each side of the deck it gives you a Ridge for the inside of the main fuselage and you see the red tabs there they make sure that turtle deck stays in alignment you can see there's a slight gap where the turtleneck is joined here you'll need to fill that later on with some filler attach the intake scoop to the port or left side on the front half of the engine cowl and note that the scoop faces forward Inlet that is next glue the two halves together and let it dry get the parts for the lower fuselage to attach them to the lower half of the column sub assembly then test fit the cowl and the lower fuselage on the main fuselage bottom to get a good fit once you've got that done glue the front cowl on you can see here that putting the cowl on into place leaves a little gap at the top the underside fits nicely but also that you know the turtle deck will have a seam but we'll have to address those with filler I used some water-based putty here to fill the gap then I wiped away any excess with a damp tissue before it dries that's safe sanding time later now gather the rudder and the elevator controls and notice that the copyright script is molded in here and that will need to be removed before you know you finish your plane off now assemble these pieces into place but a word of caution on the rudder control there glue the rudder control just to the area just in front of the rear wheel and then put the rudder on you could do it all before it dries using a little slow setting glue that will give you time to get it all aligned I mark those areas here with black and red arrows after you've got your gaps buddy fill the cockpit area there so that no paint gets in there later on from overspray now grab all the body color parts and make sure that you look for any obvious defects there along with the body of course in the wheel pants to be painted I painted my model with a light color it's a krylon white primer and I followed that up with some semi matte clear and notice that the wheel pants there are only tacked together just a small dab of glue so that they could be painted as an assembly let these all dry before handling now we'll work on the wheel so this consists of four parts to complete and the wheels were painted Tamiya rubber black and a Tamiya aluminum for the hubs and then make them to make them fit properly use the back of the inner wheel pants and mount them to the lower landing axle I painted my axle of aluminum per the instructions but now slip the cowl over the hub and line it up with a guide pin then slip on the wheel and the hub and glue them into place and then add the other wheel pan and do the same thing what's the body and wings dry I like to decal them here because it's much harder after the wings are installed so I decal most everything except for the wing lock area that's black and name of the plane and as the build progresses you'll see the decals are already applied so use a couple of spots to tack the lower wing into position for an idea of your fit with the lower wing tacked into position you can see how the finished wheels look here and see how they aligned up and and look horizontal or perpendicular to the body of the plane pull the wing struts from the aileron controls out and paint goes red now remove the lower wing remember we just tacked it into place then the next step is attaching and aligning the wings and it's most important to be patient test fit this make sure everything lines up and fits into the sockets and glueing points and until the proper position is achieved keep making sure that you make adjustments so that they do not glue the lower wing into place and pop it up or use a jig to make sure it stays aligned now test fit several times your upper wing to make sure that everything fits properly then mount the top wing on to the struts and make sure that everything looks aligned adjusting it as required so use a fairly slow setting glue to make sure that it stays in place but you still have time to adjust it the wheel pants looked great now with the wings attached and make sure this is all well dried before moving on now we'll finish up the wings by adding the aileron connectors just pull those out and add them into place in the holes and sockets provided now pull out the only clear parts for the kit the wind visors now these um can be painted the frames the same as body color if you use an acrylic paint you can really let that dry and then just go back in with something like toothpick and remove any excess or mistakes that were made to give it a nice clean look there are some cooling guides that are on the body there and you can add the windscreens in place here and as you can see they look pretty nice once they're put into position now I add the rear foot step to the fusillade side it's painted same as fuselage color now we can add the last of the decals there the wing locks there's a black one for each side and the the name of the plane for each side too there's a lot of different materials available for rigging your model and easy line is one of the products you can buy that are pretty pretty successfully used I actually used a plastic a black plastic wig those strands of hair from a wig and you just stretch it out glue it with some kind or some superglue into place and and you can use the pictures on the box and the guidelines there and the instructions to rig your kit oh there you have it one of the most successful trainers ever built this was a pretty straightforward kit with easy-to-follow instructions actually the parts pretty much just fall together once you make sure that you get the pre fit issues out of the way it's a great scale size it has ample detail and it ends up in a great-looking piece that's even better than the standard PT 17s on the market now one saving grace was those molded struts for the inner upper wing assembly which makes it much more easy to align those wings and even though they weren't perfect many of the parts and the kits still very are very detailed when finished now the copy right placement on the wing was one thing that you know was one detriment but I still think this is a great looking easy to build kit for actually I think an intermediate modeler could put this together with no issues and once it is done you can put that on the shelf with pride because it really looks great we hope you like this premium quality step-by-step review and so that you don't miss any more please subscribe to our YouTube channel which you can also find us on Facebook and at WWI on replicas calm Thanks