A very simple wishlist

[Richard-368268]

Hello

I thought it might be good idea to steal special hobbies thunder and release a new 1.72 Westland Whirlwind fighter/fighter bomber, with perhaps d-day decals before their one comes out. You'd make a lot of money.

The biggest gap in the market is simple and obvious, at the moment I have every single allied bomber in 1.72 scale (plus plenty of Luftwaffe and Italian planes), from all sorts of companies. I sold my Liberator because your new one is so much better.

I understand that many model enthusiasts don't build planes with crew inside. I don't know why, unless perhaps people feel that doing so makes their models more akin to toys. I am a few months off forty, my name is Richard I build model planes...

Anyway, I have many, many, many aircraft that need filling with crew. 1.72 scale, I think that many other people would also like to do the same, especially kids (big or small). Look at the range of figures you have and how many realistically don't sell, notwithstanding, paras, RAF groundcrew etc.

You make scale model aeroplanes, yet you don't make a box of either different fighter pilots (either all RAF, Luftwaffe, USA, Allied, Axis, a mix etc) or indeed just bomber crews, generic bog standard bomber crews that fit. At the moment I buy all of mine off somebody who prints a very large variety in all scales and sells them on the internet, but they are a tiny bit too big for your planes.

Work it out. Crew for planes. I'm quite happy to have a standard RAF heavy bomber crew pack and buy several to make them work for me. You don't even need to have separate appendages, we'd just cut and glue to fit.

I realise this isn't cool, but I can promise you there is a massive market for it.

Please listen

Peace,

Rich:)

[SD45elect2000]

I’m all for it for sure!

 

These are from CMK and Legend models.

 

Randall

[null_null981707818191]

Totally agree with the idea! Although the PJ Productions available from Hannants are nice, they don't include a generic bomber crew. I wonder what the additional cost would be to include the figures when making the mould?

[john redman]

I think there are 2 reasons most builds seem to omit crew, one logical and one practical. 

The logical one is that if the model is to look as accurate as possible, then if depicted accurately in flight it should have a spinning propeller and no visible stand. This is impossible, so aircraft are shown wheels down and parked. As they are clearly depicted not about to fly, then you don't want the pilot inside. You also can't usually show off any interior detail - engine, weapon bays, landing gear - if the aeroplane is depicted in the air.

The practical one is that figures are the hardest of all to paint. Not that machines aren't hard, it's that everyone knows whether a human face looks correct,  whereas very few people know whether an instrument panel does. So errors are conspicuous, and the subject is unforgiving.  If you have a bug-eyed pilot with a grog blossom face on him, everyone will notice, so it undermines the impression the whole thing makes. 

(The latter incidentally is why Tracey Emin is a blagger. She can't draw, and you can tell she can't, because she plainly can't draw faces. If she can't actually get down onto the canvas what's in front of her, then you have no idea what she was trying to depict with any given doodle.)

I digress. Personally I like aircraft in flight and wheels up, because that is the entire point of a plane. Depicting it on the ground is like building an E Type up on bricks with the engine in pieces, but that's just my opinion. To be fair, classic Jags do actually look like that much of the time...

[null_null981707818191]

Only a minor issue really, but surely an aircraft getting ready to taxi on to the runway would have its crew on board? And whilst I get your point about spinning propellers, presumably if 'in flight', there would certainly be a pilot? I also think that having figures involved gives a sense of scale and human involvement - although I agree that painting the figures can be a bit tricky... On balance, my vote would certainly be to have the pilot/crew figures included; a modeller can choose to omit them, but you can't include them if they're not there!.

[Marto]

If an aircraft is on the ground, its more likely us engineers are all over it then flight crew. Heck most ground runs are done by us too. I'd actually like to see an engineer posed as though he's in the flight deck fixing something rather then the odd looking Airfix mechanic holding a massively oversized spanner! 

This: 

 

Instead of this: 

[Ratch]

I'd like some proper ground crew, drinking tea!

[peebeep]

The question of crew figures is something of an old chestnut. Personally I'd think the provision, or lack thereof of figures is down to economics/commercial reality. Does a product sell better if it has figures? Does a product sell worse without? Probably about the same in both cases, therefore accountant men say ditch the figures. Separate figure sets, good idea in practice, Revell have tried it, but basically their sets have fizzled out to naught. I bought some going cheap in TK Maxx and concluded that this was surplus stock being offloaded, the further conclusion being there's not actually that much demand for the product. Go figure (sorree!). On the plus side, now that 3D printing is here to stay a lot of one man band and small manufacturers are able to do very high quality figures, either as downloadable files to print yourself, or ready printed. The fact is that 3D print figures can carry far more detail than their injection moulded equivalent and if you're buying ready printed they're not hideously expensive. Google 3D print aircrew figures in the required scale, you'll get lots of hits. 

[john redman]

I would like someone to produce 3d prints of the old A shape dogfight doubles stands. The large one vanished about 25 years so that even the WW2 pairs got the smaller one, which is suitable only for small planes. With the reissue of the Bristol / Fokker pair without even that, just two u-shaped clear stands, it seems the other one's had it too. 

Ideally someone would produce both sizes and maybe another even bigger one for pairings of later, larger aircraft.