BarryWilliams

An excellent build, superb weathering. Absolutely right that this aircraft carried the firewall camo scheme, not the standard RAF pattern (as some depict it), one tip, aircraft with the firewall camo had a small crocodile motife on the fin, left side, above the flash. You can scroll down to see this 112 squadron aircraft, only the starboard side is shown but the croc motife is clear on some of the other pics. https://www.3squadron.org.au/subpages/Mustangs/3 Sqn P-51K P4.htm

The 1/32s Trumpeter and Hobbyboss kits that are very good in my experience are: Me162 Dauntless Avenger Swordfish Mig 3 Sturmovik P61

HP Halifax Vikers Wellington Short Sterling We can but hope...

My missus just does not get it. In her mind the only worthwhile pastimes are out in the open air, perhaps running or walking. She can’t sit still for more than half an hour reading and thinks under two hours in front of a tv is too long of an evening. It’s not as if I can get her out to a pub instead!! She is driven up the wall if stuck inside in bad weather and moans because we have a new home that does not need any jobs done. Models are not allowed out of our garage in which I get to use a limited space at one end and she complained because my modest stash of 7 encroached onto some garage shelving. She cannot understand how I am not bored after an hour at the bench and thinks a hobby is something you might do only for an hour once a week. ‘I have never heard of anyone wanting to do a hobby for an hour nearly every day, you are weird’ she says. I just wish that she could find something to engage with in doors, but being inside and sitting down to her is just ‘waiting to die’.

It is easy enough to get some BB to add. Vallejo, Mig and MRP all supply them. I like the new bottles myself.

I did a calculation that MRP are cheaper than Mr Color, allowing for the 30ml bottles instead of 10ml even taking into account 50% thinning of Mr Color with MLT. It was some time ago now. A lot of people just look at the price and think they are expensive without realising the bigger bottles.

I do t think anyone has a problem with a bit of building, adjusting etc. Put it it this way: you get a tradesman in for a job, a decorator perhaps, he does the job using poor quality materials and is sloppy with the paint, he even forgets to paint one wall. Would you still be happy to pay him the full whack? oh that don’t matter mate, here is your cash’. That is is what we are talking about here. It is not just about some poor fit, not just about a few errors in the instructions, not just about missing parts (has anyone actually scratch built that missing forward bulkhead yet, to build the kit as per the instructions). Not to mention the crap quality brittle plastic, those ejector pin marks etc etc. This is sheer carelessness in design and manufacture releasing a shoddy kit before it was developed up to a decent standard. There is is a massive gulf between Tamiya ‘shake and bake’ and this Kitty Hawk crap with most of what we build being in between. All kits have issues but the Bronco takes the prize for the worse kits that I have ever cut plastic on and I do not exclude those old kits from 30 years ago. Kitty Hawk should be ashamed of themselves for not taking even a little care over this.

We all have different tastes and get different things from a kit. Me, I build for relaxation and fun and that Bronco has no fun in it at all. All kits have their issues, but most also have redeeming features that balance things out. I did not find that with the Bronco. Based on the Bronco I would characterise KH as a company run by an accountant whose spreadsheet told him that the development budget had run out and ordered the kit into production regardless that it was unfinished. That is how the kit felt to me, rushed into production before it was ready. That is why I stand by my description of it as shoddy. Mind you you I had just finished the Tammy 1/32 Mossie, sheer pleasure from start to finish so that Bronco was a real contrast.

But if we keep excusing shoddy kits then they will keep producing shoddy products. No review I read of the Bronco exposed just how bad it is so I feel ‘mis-sold’ a third rate product.

Mmmm Kitty Hawk.... currently my least favourite manufacturer after working on their Bronco, which is one of a very small number of kits that ended up thrown away. It was the very worse kit that I have ever attempted, nice subject, nice packaging, nice schemes but appallingly executed. They just got nothing right with that cheap brittle plastic, full of badly positioned ejector pins, poorly moulded, large sprue gates some badly position on transparencies, indifferent fit terribly poor instructions and, even a part pictured on the instructions that was not produced in plastic!! I went from amusement at the instructions at first, to being infuriated at how any company could possibly release such a shoddy kit. I have the F5 Tiger in the stash and if that is no better then I will never, under any circumstance, buy a Kitty Hawk again, even if they do release a Jaguar, a subject I would truly love in 1/32. Why, I wonder, do so many people make excuse for them. They don’t deserve it.

In my experience, using a fair few of these over the last few years, is that they do usually show some shrinkage. Vinyl also has the problem of lifting over detail. So I am tending to get the paper versions.

But they are 30mls compared to 10mls for Tamiya’s.

Touching up is indeed not easy. If the paint has been left for a day or two it is somewhat more resilient to a brush touch up. I tend to allow a little paint to thicken for a short while in a dish before using it to touch up using a ‘dabbing’ motion with a small brush. It works in small areas. When touching up on exposed surfaces or larger areas you can do it with the airbrush and some localised masking. It really is not a problem.

A-14 Faded Grey in the MRP range. It is MRP-021. You could check out the rest of the MRP Soviet WW2 colours as they have a good selection of the AMT and ‘A’ colours.

I dont think it is a problem. Towards the latter stages of the war there were a lot of colour variations due to supply and manufacturing issues. Given, as well, how colours weather in different ways we can get overly concerned about the exact shade. No-one can really tell you what manufacturer got it right, if any has, so you make your choice based on your favourite paint brand.