A great kit to build..some very minor trimming needed. At the smaller scale, definitely need patience and some skill

Looks great

I built the original Revell kit shortly after it first appeared. Prior to that time the plastic kits that I built were from Aurora's Famous Fighters of All Nations series (P-40, F-90, F6F, FW190). The Revell F-89D was a big step up from the earlier Aurora kits in scale accuracy, number of parts, and overall quality. The new Atlantis release of the old kit is of similar quality to the Revell kit, except that the panel lines aren't as crisply molded, and there are dimples underneath the molding ejector pins that were not there with the Revell kit (I still have the much damaged original). Also, the Revell plastic is more silver than the plastic of the Atlantis kit. The fit of the parts isn't too bad, except for at the bottom between the engine cowlings. The frame surrounding the clear canopy is supposed to snap into place, but it simply wouldn't fit. I had to sand away part of the bottom of the canopy to make it fit. One problem with the original model (continuing in the Atlantis version) is the landing gear doors for the nose gear. They fit the wheel well, but the well is narrower than the dual nose wheels. If your model is made wheels down, you are supposed to attach the doors beside the wheel well parallel to each other with a butt joint. But on the real aircraft, the doors are angled front to back and side to side. I used tiny thin brass strips to attach the doors to the inside of the wheel well at the correct angle. Another problem is the USAF and wing insignia decals--they are much too large on both the Revell and Atlantis kits. After scanning the decal sheet and using Photoshop, I PRINTED NEW DECALS of the correct size using an inkjet printer. I also made new decals for the "No Step" signs on the blow-in doors and the warning placards and markings beside the cockpit. I simulated the bare aluminum areas using a mixture of Testors silver and matte grey (4:1 ratio) and painted the wingtips, rocket pods, and tail using Testors 1103 red to represent arctic red. The tail number for this model, 21938, is adjacent in sequence to the number of an F-89D shown on p. 76 of Isham & McLaren's "Northrop F-89 Scorpion: A Photo Chronicle". That aircraft in 1954 was assigned to the 65th FIS. It did not have black antiglare panels on the rocket pods, which were solid red. I thought that the kit, though old, looks good when finished. I like it better than the 1/72 Hobbycraft F-89, which has other issues. With putty, sanding off raised lines for locating decals, and effort at re-scribing panel lines you can achieve pleasing results--not as good as with more modern kits, but still a pleasure to build and admire.Note: The decals shown were upgraded from those supplied with the kit. The kit provides the U.S. Air Force markings for the nose, the tail numbers on the fuselage and vertical stabilizer, the national insignias for wings and fuselage, and the USAF markings for the wings. There were no other fuselage labels or markings.