Roden 1/48 T-28D Trojan Build Review

By Fotios Rouch

Build Review

When Roden came out with the T-28 family, I bought all of their variants. Nice kits and light years ahead of the old under-scale Monogram kit which certainly had a place in my heart from when I was a young modeler. After I built the Navy T-28C in its attractive white/red scheme, I thought it would be nice to build a SEA T-28D as well. I did like the Roden unmarked scheme on the box-art and decided to go with it. I also wanted to use for this build some aftermarket accessories I had in the stash.

Dimitri from DMold happens to like the Trojan as well and he created some nice improvements for the cowling intake and the canopy. I also got the True Details resin cockpit, the Aerobonus resin engine, the SUU-11B/A the crew, and I also had some leftover resin parts from the T-28C build.

The True Details cockpit requires major thinning of the fuselage insides for the tub to fit and for the new sidewall details. As I was working the adjustments for the cockpit to fit, I decided that the side consoles were leaving little room for the seats and that the seats were a bit too narrow to my eyes. I chose to use the resin sidewalls, the nice instrument panels and a few other things but to stick with the plastic cockpit tub.

The DMold cowling has some interesting features to it. It provides a deep oil cooler assembly with its own intake grill on the front and a deep outlet side that gives more realism and visual appeal. It is interesting to note that the stock engine will not for inside the resin cowling but the Aerobonus resin engine fits perfectly and accommodates the enlarged DMold resin oil cooler without any modifications.

The Aerobonus engine is a generic R-1820, nice with detailed cylinders but it needs lifter rods, ignition wires oil sump, governor and some small unique items to the Trojan. Some kit engine parts can be used to steal the governor, the oil sump and the small lower intake that peaks out and above the cowling lip.

The DMold canopy corrects the shape of the middle canopy and simplifies the rear canopy by integrating the canopy frame to the clear part. The front windshield is the stock kit part and needed no changes. The clear parts benefit from polishing with your favorite metal polishing agent and a dip in Future.

I decided not to replace the exhaust stacks and just hollow the stock plastic parts out with fine drill bits.

So after all the basic stuff was taken care of, I started researching details on the T-28D-5 Nomad that the kit includes decals for. There is some material and images on the web about the Nomad, its Zorro missions and its peculiar camouflage but I found a lot of concentrated knowledge from Tom Cleaver and his interpretation of a Nomad out of the Roden kit. The Nomad camouflage is not the standard SEA affair. I will take most of Cleaver’s info and adapt it to my build for my best interpretation of this unique mission aircraft.

To arm my Nomad, I used Brassin from Eduard for the rocket launchers and the gun pods. Great products with superb detail.

I used the Russian Armory resin wheels that had much nicer detail on the wheels and the brakes, so I had to cut off the plastic brakes in order to fit the new wheels that had the brakes already molded on them.

I have not put pilots in a model since I was a kid, so I decided to do it for this build. Painting pilots is an art-form and maybe I will master it when I grow up. It certainly adds some life to model.

This was a unique build. I wish I had more color pictures and references. Check out this website on the T-28D-5 and its Zorro missions: www.specialoperations.net/T-28/zorro.html.

It certainly looks interesting in its unique camouflage; I wish I had more color pictures of the full-scale subjects.