Simon Norton1707820138

I'm building the new mould Phantom FG.1 and wanted to build it as the Alcock and Brown not realising that it was an FGR.2 until after I bought the decals. I thought i might be able to build the FGR.2 anyway as I noticed there were a lot of spare parts on the sprues. I downloaded the instructions off scalemates and checked which parts were required, went well until I got about halfway through checking and found the FGR.2 had another sprue.

I've always had excellent service from the Airfix spares department. Apart from Revell how many other manufacturers even offer a spares service?

I can see a couple of problems with Airfix going for 1:100 scale. First a battleship in that scale is 8 or 9 feet long. Second polysterene would lack the structural strength for a kit that big, which is why r/c modellers make the hulls out of fibreglass or wood. Third the cost would be enormous, there was a 1/144 Bismarck proposed by a German manufacturer a few years ago at a cost of $1000. I don't think it got beyond the prototype stage. Something that should be remembered is that plans and dockyard models can differ considerably from the final appearance of the ship. Also refits etc can alter the appearance of a ship radically during it's service life. Look at HMS Warspite in WW1 and WW2, there's hardly a part of the ship which remains unaltered.

While I'm all for giving credit to Heller for re-releasing their ship range. I did notice a couple of things while browsing their website. First their entire range is very francocentric, not many non-french subjects, so they are playing to their strengths and expoliting a niche market. Secondly their prices are quite high. With a few exceptions (like the 1:48 aircraft) they are mostly one and a half to twice the price of an Airfix equivalent. The 1:400 battleships like Bismarck which were series 8 when Airfix boxed them are €55 (series 8 is about £30 now). The 1:100 HMS Victory, it's a great kit but at how many are they going to sell at €205? A final thought. Heller has just been taken over so are in the position Airfix was ten years ago when Hornby took over. How may of the "new releases" are actually newly manufactured rather than being reboxings of what's in the warehouse?

Much as I'd like to see the re-release of some of the 1:600 warships. There's only about half a dozen people on this thread who seem interested. 60 posts in 10 weeks isn't exactly indicative of massive interest.

This was one of the popular requests for kitstarter. It was reported that the fuselage moulds were damaged preventing it's reissue.

If you are going to build, for example, a Spitfire then, with a few exceptions, there will be a kit of the particular mark you are looking for. So a "layman" is going to buy the mark he wants and maybe aftermarket decals for a particular aircraft. I don't see the aircraft market lending itself to multiple purchases of the same kit, unlike say AFVs or figures where multiple kits for wargaming or dioramas might be purchased. Going by the articles in Airfix Model World there doesn't seem to be much appetite for conversions anymore. In 60 odd issues I don't think there has been a single one.

I'm not sure I agree with Jonathan's comments about aircraft lending themselves to repeat purchases but not ships. There is far more scope for conversion and alternate schemes for ships than aircraft. Not only can ships be converted to different members of their class but during their lifetimes, and a lot of the RN battleships were in service for 20-30 years, they changed considerably during their career. For example the Airfix HMS Warspite is how she appeared in WW2. With a bit of work she can be converted to another Queen Elizabeth class battleship of the period or, with a lot more work back to how she appeared in WW1 or between the wars. She can even be used a basis for a conversion to a 'Revenge' class battleship. She also sported several different colour schemes over her career. As I've said before I think Airfix missed a trick in only ever releasing one ship in each class, Bismarck/Tirpitz excepted, when a sprue of alternate parts could have got them 5 or more kits from one basic mould. The Heller 1:400 battleships all came with alternates from what I remember. Unfortunately, ships aren't nowhere near as popular as aircraft and I think 1:600 has had it's day. Since I only build probably one ship kit a year, most of which have been sitting on a shelf for 30+ years or rescued from the bargain bin, they aren't going to get rich off the likes of me.

I imagine there are a number of reasons why there are currently almost no ships in the catalogue. The main one being Airfix don't think they'll sell in sufficient numbers for it to be economic to tool up. The last Black Friday sale the HMS Illustrious gift set was going for less than £20 and HMS Daring for £25. If they are selling at a 50-66% discount it would indicate that they aren't exactly racing off the shelves. Bismarck was being sold off for £3.49. Most of the 1:600 warships date to the 1960's and much as I personally enjoy building them, they are crude by today's standards and in some cases the moulds are showing signs of age, to the point where the part fit is unaccepatble. Apart from the Series 4 Battleships most haven't been in production since the 1980s, so how viable are the moulds? However, I would be prepared to place a small bet on a 1:350 Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier from Airfix in the next few years.

Very interesting website but a lot of the manufacturers on there produce resin kits and a lot of the Injection kit manufacturers are either defunct [JB, Lindberg,Matchbox, Nitto etc] don't produce AFVs [Hobbyboss, Dapol] or produce short run kits [Ace and Ukranian/Russian] reboxings. Of the major manufacturers of plastic injection mould kits only Trumpeter and Dragon appear to have extensive ranges. Revell only have 21 1/72 military vehicles in their catalogue this year. Hasegawa have 35 which is about half their range. Airfix had about 18 last time I counted, again about half the range. Apart from the Revell kits, none of these are in the first flush of youth. Good news is that Italeri seem to have reintroduced a lot of the old Esci kits in their new catalogue. If you after WW2 subjects, hunt around and don't mind if a vehicle is resin or plastic then you can get waht you want in either 1/76 or 1/72. If, like me, you focus on Modern AFVs and specifically the more obscure Soviet and Russian kit then you are stuck with 1/72. To go with all the obscure British Army kit which only comes in 1/76 😢

I dug my collection of WW2 AFVs out of the loft at the weekend, I was surprised how few Airfix AFV kits I'd actually built - a Tiger, Sherman, armoured car, Stug III and Churchill and 2 Pz IVs plus the 6pdr, 25pdr, 88mm and Pak 40 guns and associated tractors. The majority were Matchbox (1/76) and Esci (1/72). I built all the Matchbox AFV kits, apart from the Churchill bridge layer, in most cases I built 2 or 3 because I was in to wargaming. I had a quick comparison of the sizes between 1/72 and 1/76. Pz III - Matchbox and Esci were almost identical. Panther - Hasegawa [1/72] and Matchbox - Hasegawa was slightly larger but it wasn't that noticeable. Elefant - Esci and Airfix polythene - huge difference as Airfix one is massively underscale. 25pdr - Esci and Airfix - again a noticeable differance. I also had a look at my cold war era AFVs and there was a noticeable difference between the 1/76 [Airfix, Matchbox, CMSC, SMS and Cromwell] and the 1/72 [Esci, ACE, Revell and others]. The most noticeable was the Cromwell miniatures and Matchbox/Revell T-80 but only because the Matchbox offerring is about 1/67 scale when you measure it. the least noticeable were the Esci and Airfix M113's which identical in length but the Esci kits were noticeably wider. Finally, having had a look at the kit manufacturers websites there are a dearth of small scale AFVs. Only Dragon, Trumpeter and the Ukrainian manufacturers seem to have anything new in their ranges. The Revell range is very disappointing both the Matchbox reissues and a lot of their own kits seem to be out of production.

Sarge. If you are going to disparage another commentator at least check the facts first. Milicast have 600 vehicles in their Battlefield range and 731 in their Premiere range, although there is a lot of overlap. MMS have 186 vehicles in their range. The debate between 1:76 and 1:72 has so far ignored that there are two different audiences. Model makers who wnat something as accurate and detailed as possible and wargamers who want somethng accurate but relatively cheap and simple to build and will probably want several of the same kit. Generally speaking 1/76 AFV kits are £6-8 and 1/72 £10-15. I'd argue that there is a market for 1/76 kits as long as the price is right. Historically 1/76 was well served by Nitto, Fujimi, Airfix and Matchbox who pretty much covered all the main WW2 AFVs, soft skin vehicles and artillery. In contrast to 1/32 where there are only a handful of examples by Airfix and Monogram compared to the hundreds of 1/35 kits. That said I don't actually see much of a future in 1/76 at the moment. Revell only have 4 old Matchbox kits in their range currenltly and more than half of the Airfix kits are out of production. Too many of the Airfix kits are from the 1960's, of dubious accuracy (Sherman, Panther, Tiger, Armoured Car etc) and in need of retirement.

Eduard and White Ensign models both do photoetch sets... ... for about twice waht the kit costs