Russ1707821018

Perhaps, but my kit was purchased from Amazon.

I paid £8.33 for the ROW club and £12.50 for the Red Box (because no VAT in the US). Shipping to the US is a flat £30 until you exceed £200 so it pays to add more items to the Red Box order to reduce the effective cost of shipping.

Nice job Airfix on the bundle for the K2Y release with the pint glass. It would have been nice if you had just upgraded all the people who pre-ordered before the bundle to the bundle package as a thank you for committing early. In the event, I canceled my original pre-order and re-ordered the bundle with the glass. Now you need to partner with a brewery for an Airfix K2Y beer, although I’d be unlikely to be able to get it in the US.

To get free shipping to the USA you have to spend £200 otherwise the shipping cost is £30. That said, the US has no import duties or VAT and you don’t pay UK VAT so £200 spent actually gets you £240 worth of stuff at UK retail prices. It definitely pays to make fewer large orders than lots of small ones.

With few exceptions, like the Airfix Southern Cross liner kit, the Airfix ship kits are not particularly rare having had multiple reissues over the years. The Southern Cross is valuable because it was a limited run promotional item for the company that owned the real ship. A kit in mint condition would probably sell for a few hundred pounds. The Airfix 1/600 SS France kit is maybe the next most valuable at £100-£200 on eBay because the tooling is lost and the kit cannot be produced again. Next would be the 1/600 MV Free Enterprise II. The original release of this kit was quite limited and it was never re-released. We also know the moulds are missing. Typical eBay pricing on that is in the area of £100. Depending on condition and box type I’d expect the other 1/600 ship kits to sell in the £10-£50 range and the large sailing ships in the £25-£75 range. You can find people listing them for a lot more, but won’t see many sold items outside those ranges. I'm less familiar with the Revell, Renwall, Lindberg, Hawk, and Aurora ship ranges but there are some that can sell for £100+. The best thing to do is look at SOLD items on eBay, not listings, if you want to get an idea of current value and don’t be surprised if an item sells for much less than expected. Less frequently, things will sell for well-over expectations if you get two motivated bidders. The bottom line is his collection is probably not worth life-changing money.

This is all very strange. I just received a Vintage Classics SM.79 that was missing the clear parts. The bag for the clear parts was there but was slit down the side and was empty. I contacted Airfix spares support and they sent the missing parts free of charge within 48 hours. And I’m in the US.

All the 1/35 armour kits in the catalogue have a five digit code that looks like A13**. On the basis of price, they are in the same range as Series 6 to Series 9 aircraft. Is there guidance on how many flying hours are needed to get one of these A13** kits, or are they just unavailable under the flying hours program, which seems a bit unfair to people who primarily build armour. Come on Airfix! If you want to get the interest of people who build vehicles then having a club that only caters to aircraft modelers seems like a bad way to go about it.

There were a few clunkers in those first Hornby released kits: 1/72 Hurricane Mk.II, 1/72 Bf 109G-6, 1/72 Mig-15, 1/72 Canberras (although I think they were designed under the previous regime). The Canberras can be made into something passable with a little effort. The others, the basic shapes are so inaccurate there's not much you can do with them other than make them look cosmetically more accurate.

The nose, forward of the windshield, is different between the NF.10 and T.11 and the tail fins are different as well. The hardest part of making an T.11 into an NF.10 is going to be the cockpit canopy. There is a lot more framing on the NF.10 and only the top part opens. The whole thing looks shorter too. In the cockpit, the NF.10 did not have ejection seats, hence the shorter canopy and smaller canopy opening. The only 1/72 NF.10 kit I can even find is the Czech Master Resin kit. But if you had one of those you wouldn't be converting the Airfix kit.

AZModel announced a new kit of the Fairey Delta II in 1/48th for release at Telford in 2017. https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235016507-148-fairey-delta-2-fd-2-by-az-model-release-in-2020/&tab=comments#comment-2628550 The kit has been delayed repeatedly since then but is reportedly still in the works, maybe it will be scheduled for release this year.

I don't see a need for a new 1/72 P-38J/L, that has been covered quite nicely, but as you say, the best kits of the D thru H variants are short run and need some effort to build.

Scalemates don't get everything right. I reckon they're guessing. Why would Airfix use an old mould when they replaced the tooling not so long back? I can't fault that logic.... the other 3 in the series won't be new tool kits though. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Certainly the Top Gun one I had was badly worn out. BTW I found an almost identical Testors Top Gun A4 on Ebay (found, I didn't buy). Thats got the E model hump which the real film ones don't...... it was worryingly cheap too. The Testors kit is a rebox of the Italeri A-4E. Not bad, but the slats are molded with the wing in the retracted position.

We know by the catalogue that they will be the old tools That's a shame and a missed opportunity since these kits are more likely to be bought by casual modelers or non-modeler fans of the films. The old Airfix F-14 was okay in its day, but it does not bear comparison to the recently released kits from Fine Molds and Academy. Airfix could have just bought bagged shots from Academy, thrown in new instructions and Top Gun decals and it would be a winner. Same with the F/A-18E. I can't help but think this is a step backwards; they don't even come with the Vintage Classics logo.

Airfix really should do new Bf 109G kits in 1/72 and 1/48 (and 1/24). There is an almost endless variety of colour schemes so that there is always scope for new boxings with different marking options. I get that the current kit sells to people who are particularly concerned about exacting accuracy (as did the old kit) but there's a huge and enthusiastic market for accurate 109G kits. Of those available, only FineMolds and Tamiya are really up to modern standards.

Another change in the Va from the IIa (and the Mk.Is for that matter) was the installation of metal-skinned versus fabric covered ailerons. I believe this helped reduce stick forces on the roll axis at high speed. The Airfix kit has the earlier fabric covered ailerons so it cannot actually be built as an accurate Va straight out of the box. That said, most people are not familiar with the nuances of different Spitfire marks and probably won't notice. Weirdly, the newish Revell kit, which has been released as a II and a Va, has the metal covered ailerons so it cannot be built as an accurate Mk.II (it also has problems that the Airfix kit doesn't).