ACADEMY ACA12402 Model Kit, Various for ages 14+

Easy assembly. Built this with my 13yr old and 12yr old.

This was a great plane. However, you had to use glue for every step. It was a great size and wasn’t too small or too big. Overall, great plane

After putting it together I realized it didn't fit as well I would have liked. There was a lot of filling, sanding and re-painting. After a tidies built, I made it look decent enough to sell.

Where to start - I agree with other reviews in that the pieces do NOT fit together in any manner short of significant sanding. Do yourself a favor and buy the Revell 1/48 A-10. Here's the thing, comparing the two products it almost seems as though the Academy model is just a reduced version of the Revell model. Pretty much the same pieces scaled down, you know? 3D printed, and not so well.

First off the instructions are incredibly vague and do not help at all. Some of the pictures don't even show pieces in the right position they were in previous pictures. They don't even tell you exactly where pieces go they just show what piece to connect to what piece with an arrow. That confusion let me to trying to glue the instrument panel where the HUD goes. The biggest problem, and I mean BIGGEST, is that NONE of the pieces fit together properly. NONE of them. I gave up trying to get the cockpit to fit inside the fuselage. You have to do so much sanding to get pieces to fit right and every single piece has a gap somewhere afterwards regardless of what you do. I almost broke the entire thing twice. Once trying to attach the wings, and once trying to attach the tail because they did not fit AT ALL, but luckily I got smart and just sanded a TON of plastic off and even then it was still a struggle to pop them in place. The nose much smaller than it should be and so while one side is flush the other three are not and sit inside the edges beginning the fuselage. No real way to fix that unless I want to learn how to use bondo. I am not a gung-ho expert modeler who can sand and plaster and paint life-like models from crappy kits. This was literally my first model and I expected to be able to just snip out the pieces, file the bumps down, and glue em all together. What I did not expect was for every single piece to be misshapen and not fit properly together. The engines look absolutely ridiculous with gaps all around where the fan housing fits to the engine cover. The vertical stabs have these tiny little slots to connect to the tail and it's not enough to keep a secure hold so one of them is still wobbly even after cementing. This is because the stabs don't sit flush against where they connect so all they have to hold on are the tiny little tabs in the tiny little slots. None of the bombs or fuel tanks even fit together flush. It's ridiculous. The gun is curved downward because none of the 3 pieces that make it up fit together flush, don't even know why something like that needs to be three pieces.I have no idea what I am going to do with this thing since I can't attach the nose gear. Without the cockpit in place there is nothing for the nose gear to attach to. Also forgot to put weight inside the nose before connecting the two fuselage pieces so it wouldn't even sit on the gear if I had put them in. Look at other reviews for why(very tail heavy)I am probably going to have to just put a piece of tape or something over the openings for the gear and paint it to look like they are closed and figure out some way to have the wheels in the right place since the rear wheels protrude slightly when stowed for emergency belly landings. I haven't even moved on past putting the tail on because I know it will just be more frustration. I am just so disappointed in this kit and it is a real shame my first ever model kit had to be so poorly produced. Next time I'll just pay more for the quality kits, I've learned my lesson. Can't trust South Korea to produce model kits apparently.

Pros:- Nicely detailed for 1/72, with recessed panel lines.-Great armament selection includedCons:-Difficult to piece the fuselage halves together, this model has bad seam lines everywhere- Unless you add weight to the front before glueing halves together, it's a complete tail sitter. I didn't put enough in there and didn't realize till the engines were added as it fell backwards. Too late to fix that- Decals were ok, but didn't really stick well. The front shark mouth was particularly tricky to set correctly around the curved noseIt's maybe 3 stars because of how painstaking it was to build. Majority of this model just didn't seem to want to fit together without effort and patience. If you're looking for a flawless fit and finish, this one will require good filling and sanding skills that I just did not have the patience for. But in the end it looks good for casual builders who may not care as much

Looks good. Everything is there and the sprues look good

Todo viene en piezas muy pequeñas, muy difícil de armar. Pensé que venía armado y me lleve esa sorpresa muchas piezas no encajan bien.. imi hijo muy decepcionado 😞