ESCI – 9068 – F-111A “Aardvark”

Description:

F-111A “Aardvark”

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark attack and tactical bomber developed in the 60s that later evolved to multi-role and electronic warfare through updates. “A” variant was the first production version as pure bomber role. Most of the F-111As were later converted to EF-111A Raven for electronic warfare.

ESCI tooled the F-111A kit in 1988, the same year did a second release including a sprue change for the ESCI – 9072 – EF-111A Raven. At the time of release, the Airfix and Revell kits around for the same topic were dated in the 60s and for a brief time the ESCI kit was the best F-111 in 1/72 scale, but just one year after, Hasegawa introduced their F-111 moulds in the market, and has been upgrading and issuing them since then. In 1984 Monogram had tooled their own F-111, which can be comparable to the ESCI kit, also issued by Revell as Revell – 04974 – EF-111A Raven, but at the time was not so easy get it in Europe.

The ESCI kit was released also under AMT/Ertl and also by Italeri (Italeri – 1235 – EF-111 A RAVEN)

This kit remains considered as a good kit, there is no perfect kit, and it’s beaten by Hasegawa ones in most of the aspects, but it’s still a kit that worth it to build and can turn into a nice model. One of the problems of these old ESCI kits is that they are often sell at too high “collectors” prices rather than model prices nowadays.

The main tool of the kit are two sprues with most of the parts for the kit, and shared with ESCI – 9072 – EF-111A Raven, and a third sprue with the tail and the weapons payload and pylons. This sprue changes in the Raven variant, with a different tail and different external tanks rather than weapons. It worth it to mention at this point, that AMT/Ertl did a release in 1993, for an F-111F Aardvark variant, code number 8936, well, this box included the sprues from this kit, the sprue from the Raven version, and third new sprue with at least parts for the Pave Tack and GBU-28 plus some other. This parts can’t be found in any of the ESCI/Italeri kits, only in the AMT/Ertl 8936. Some of the features of the ESCI kits are that wings can swept back in different degrees and canopy can be display open. In the flaws exposed by the finest modellers, tail is bit too long, nacelle between the engines is too long and at the wrong angled and the air inlet is fully retracted as in flight, and it needs to be fully extended for a parked aircraft display.

Same molds has been reissued under Italeri brand, Italeri – 1235 – EF-111 A RAVEN, last time in 2024.