john redman

Do the windows sit flush with the outer fuselage Ratch or can you see the inside edge of the recesses?

That's an interesting experience Peter, I've never had this problem but maybe I just got luckier with what I bought. The main challenge is that you have to be careful using clear as it can dissolve printer ink. When placing German crosses on an aircraft fuselage this was actually OK since I slid the decal into a little pool of Klear which was on the other side of the decal film to the side with the ink. I have an upcoming experiment to make decals for use on 1/76 Napoleonic figures. I've long thought you could do the saddle cloths of the Airfix Waterloo cavalry by painting them white or offwhite and then applying a clear decal over the top. Likewise the emblems on some foot figures' backpacks. These would be teeny decals but in principle it should work.

Mine doesn't but I assume we're talking about black serial numbers here. If you need a white decal you need to print your decal onto clear decal paper and apply the result to a white painted area. I have done this to replace German crosses that had gone yellow.

Did you buy it recently? If so, send in a photo and AFX will probably ping you a replacement.

Simplest thing is to buy a sheet of transparent decal paper and print off your own.

I was kind of looking for the passengers....

I saw this photo today of a Severn Class Lifeboat and was wondering if anyone makes suitable figures to depict those on deck?

AFX have got very good at upgrading the decals on older kits. The original red stripe issue of that DFD didn't have those invasion stripes, you just had to paint them. It's tough to get them to line up though. I acquired a Cessna and MiG21 DFD recently, which came with different markings as a DFD pair to those in the kits when sold separately (the MiG / Mirage DFD likewise). They were horribly yellowed and the dark blue of the USAAC roundels has gone pretty much black, so I have scanned them in at 1200dpm and am now editing them in GIMP. When I've got a better set I can just print them out on clear decal paper. The white of the stars and stripes markings isn't here the problem it usually is. You can't print white, as printers have no white ink and assume the print medium is white, so white areas come out transparent. You can print onto white decal paper, but I find it very hard to work with, like the skin on hot milk, and you have to cut exactly round each decal. But since the Cessna is itself white or light grey, it won't much matter; I can just place a dab of white paint where the decal's going to go.

Those are very nice!

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.

I have the same problem. Some seem to have a squeezable sweet spot where the plastic is thinner, but those aside they are tough to squeeze. I may start decanting them into empty Vallejo bottles.

Some of those are truly hideous. I'd add the Handley Page Heyford. I built biplanes like that when I was a kid, but by mistake. Then there's the Blackburn Blackburn, which looks like the Elephant Man.

I forgot to say I also love the box art even though it's not accurate. The Beaufighter is jettisoning a torpedo - it's much too high to be launching it - yet it has the rockets under its wings as well! The 109 meanwhile sports a pair of air mortars, which IIRC were a one-shot weapon designed to be launched at heavy bombers, flying in straight lines, in formation. They would have been of no value in an actual 'dogfight' of the 'doubles' variety. If you fit them to a model, you have to angle them upwards slightly, I believe. The round was so heavy it dropped like a stone if fired on a flat trajectory, so to hit a target dead ahead, it had to be fired with a few degrees of elevation. I only realised quite recently what a punch the G6 packed with the gun pods fitted compared to earlier versions. It went from 2 x rifle calibre MGs and 2 x 20mm, to 3 x 13mm MGs and 3 x 20mm - plus, the 3 x cannon now had 150 to 200 rounds per gun, instead of the previous 60 per, aboard the E. So I reckon a burst from a G6 would have weighed something like twice what it did from an E, and the G6 could keep it up for a lot longer. 60 rounds per cannon for a 109E is less than seven seconds' fire, say three bursts, whereas the G6 had twice that. Those are pretty nice builds BTW. Here is the actual MB-T: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205126586 - note how Roy Cross completely nailed the tailplane angles, the fin being dark all the way down and the demarcation lines between the upper and lower camo.

Am I right in thinking the StuG IV was a StuG III superstructure on a Panzer IV, as opposed to Panzer III, hull?

By a long way, this DFD is my favourite ever Airfix offering. I was in hospital a lot as a kid. My dad turned upon a visit once and he brought me this, as something to do. I was already an Airfixoholic anyway but this was worth being in hospital for. Fabulous looking British twin, classic German figher, both armed to the teeth. Silver and light blue plastic. They are both pretty good kits shapewise. The Beaufighter is 1958 but the 109 is 1965. Oddly the header bag art was accurate, the kit wasn't. The G6 had blisters on the nose to accommodate the 13mm gun ammo, the artwork has the same but the kit has a sort of saddle tank effect. Takes me right back to 1972 or thereabouts.

Looking at Ratch's Walrus build, I'm reminded that there are some aircraft that are plug-ugly but somehow likeable because of it. The aforesaid Walrus Grumman Duck Brewster Buffalo: known as the Flying Beer Bottle RE8. Looks hopelessly rickety...because it was Bv 141. What were they thinking?? What are yours?

I've often though that plastic modelling would not have taken off as a hobby had injection moulding not come of age just after there had been two world wars and a consequent leap in aircraft technology in particular. The vast majority of plastic modelling subjects are aircraft, military or both; if we had no subjects to model, would we build models? Maybe we'd all still be flying kites, or collecting cigarette cards and Man in Flight coins from petrol stations.

I succumbed to a Rotodyne and a Graf Spee. Full price £40.98, £34.83 after discount, £31.48 after my outstanding HR points. Still over £30, so free postage, hence £15.74 per kit. Can't really argue with that.

You're arguably worse off being a member in some circumstances. You had to pay upfront to get your 10% discount, whereas this 15% is buckshee. If your 10% discount takes you below £30, you have to spend more anyway to get the free shipping. Of course, the same applies to the 15% discount if that takes you below £30. If you signed up as a club member to get the kit, then it still can make sense on that basis. There's never been a Club kit I've wanted, so I would always ended up eBaying the club kit to pay for the membership. If there's ever a club kit I do want I will probably pick it up off eBay in the same way.

Resurrection of an old mould is probably the only way some subjects will see the light of day. There's never been a famous Austin Maxi that I know of, so the market would be limited compared to that for, say, something James Bond once drove. I'm surprised at the relative dearth of after market add ons for the 1/32 cars. They may exist, but I can't recall seeing anyone build one of these and jazz it up with p/e or resin. I suppose the challenge is that a correctly scaled aftermarket replacement TR4 interior (for example) would probably not fit inside an Airfix body shell, which is quite likely overscale due to the thickness of the plastic.

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...

That's some nice work. I wonder which came first, the 1/32 or the 1/76 version? The poses seem to be the same.

It goes to the question of what the figures are trying to depict, and the original designer was perhaps not sure or deliberately trying to make them generic. US paras apparently liked Thompsons if they could get them, but they were used as ground troops so that may have worked better. Digging into it more, the M3 fired the same ammo as the Thompson (who knew?) but weighed quite a bit less. Would you bother bringing a Thompson along on paradrops, or would you rather carry an M3 and more ammo? US paras are a possibility, but the presence of the Thompsons and the bazooka, and the absence of Brens, Stens and PIATs say these aren't British.

The parachute units were formed after the war started when Churchill observed the Germans in action in Belgium, Crete etc and wondered where our paratroopers were. The Thompson was kind of an early war weapon, purchased because Britain didn't have its own SMG. They were distributed to commandos and so on, but by the time the paratroopers were established, so was the Sten. The US story was quite similar except they equipped with the grease gun M3 as their SMG (because of the Thompson's weight and unique ammunition). Likewise I am pretty sure no British units used the bazooka, which these guys are doing. They would have had the obsolescent Boys ATR (briefly) then the PIAT. US paratroopers would have used the bazooka, but if that's what these guys are, they shouldn't have Thompsons. So nothing really marks them out as anyone's paras in particular. The 1/32 set is more accurate, so it's a shame Airfix didn't pantograph these down to 1/76, as they did with the Afrika Korps and others.

To be fair Ratch it still looks pretty good 🙂