Noble Air200 Part Three : American Aircraft
We continue to examine the sculpts and miniatures offered from Noble miniatures Air200 line. Noble, (located in Madison, Wisconsin, USA) has a lot to offer the
miniature-airplane gamer. They have a large line of World War 1 and 2 aircraft of varying scales. Their online store is a phone-order system, but hopefully they
will get that moved into the 20th centurey sometime soon. The figs we are going to look at this month, and continue next month are from their 1:200 scale
world war 2 line. These figs are also available at the online store over at Warbirdsinminiature.com.
P-39Q (A2-US102) : $6.99
I absolutely love the detail captured in this sculpt. It has a great cockpit area, is about as historically acurate as you could
ask for in a miniature AND was a lot of fun to paint. Of course going for the Olive Drab look sped up the painting process, it was still
quite a joy to put this model together.
The sculpt was clean, and there were hadly and mold lines to be trimmed up. There is enough weight to mount the AirStand set screws without
any difficulty, and the figure (despite hacing a slightly rounded bottom) performs very well on the gaming table. I was a little worried that
the rounded bottm might make it difficult to mount the set screw, but there was no problems once I got it going.
I sat and thought about the rating for this aircraft sculpt, and I have to give it a 5. Great detail, historically accurate, and a joy to paint.
P-40 KITTYHAWK (A2-US103) : $6.99
This rendition of the P-40 will pretty much serve you well ofr any of the P-40 models. It is a great sculpt, and has a nice amount of detail. As with
most all of the Noble Air200 line, this was a very easy miniature to clean up and paint. It kept a lot of the detail, even after painting. The decal on the
fig is of course British, geared towards a North African campaign I will assume (I snagged the pic from the Warbirds store with permission).
For those of you looking to run a Flying Tigers campaign, you will find this fig to be a great model for representing the P-40s flown by the American volunteers
over China.
A well deserved 4.5. Good detail, historically accurate.
P-51D MUSTANG (A2-US101) : $6.99
This has got to be the best figure in the American collection for the Air200 line from Noble. Just looking at it in the package, I knew it was going to turn out to be
a great fig. The cleanup was easy, mounting the AireStand screw a breeze, and painting it was extremely easy. Of course anytime you can just spray metallic silver over the entire
aircraft and just highlight a couple of areas is going to result in quick painting time.
These figs come in handy if youare going to do any late war American campaigns, especially bomber escort over Europe. I can't say enough good things about this miniature airplane. It is
a great sculpt!
A 5 rating. An excellent aircraft!
Noble Air200 Overall Rating
Overall the German aircraft put out by Noble are good, solid sculpts! Not a whole lot of flashing to trim, and all were very grit-free and clean. I would say they are pretty close to the best 1:200 scale aircraft I
have painted and played with so far. I would absolutely love to see them expand their line and get my hands on some more. A VERY solid 4. The price is just about right, and the figs
were easy to modify to put on the AireStands (my choice for air stands) from Aerie Miniatures (see our Warbirds in Miniature review).
Johann