cbk57

I sort of collect and I guess I do now, kind of coming back to it. I am also dealing with collections from my father and stepfather. My stepfather accumulated a huge selection of international coins, many of which he left in manilla envelopes for more than 50 years which damaged the coins. So not so great. I have been buying a few of my own of late, at the moment I am buying some Morgan dollars but not real sure where I want to go with my collection. Once July rolls around I may buy a coin, kind of spacing it out. I bought a coin in May and I bought another in June. I am going Morgans right now because i inherited a few nice ones including an 1878 Carson City that is pretty nice. I am not going to try to make a complete set, but am of a mind to buy some select ones.

kotare has posted the 109K instructions on their website. Lots of interesting stuff in there. The instructions are worth looking at even if you are not interested in buying the kit.

Whould you please make a note on my account that when the K-4 comes out to not mistakenly send me a another Cat, I have three of those, looking for your new 109.

This kit does not need much, I used double sided canopy masks from ASK when I built mine. I really like the effect you get now from double sided masks. I used the kit seat with molded seat belts, I was definitely not satisfied with this result. It would be nice if someone would offer a resin seat with molded belts. I believe Eduard makes colorized belts that would work but I not like PE type belts that much in 1/32. As such on my next Spitfire build I think I will suffer through air scale belts. I will go the same route when I do their new 109k As to the cockpit, you can add a few wires here and there and some lines for the brakes on the landing gear. I see no reason for brass gear on this kit. I found mine worked just fine. Also with plastic you might find that you need to adjust the shape of the landing gear piece that slots into the wing. I had to tweak mine just a shade to get it to fit right. So a brass replacement could be a negative there. There is a copany on our vendor board called aircraft in pixels that do a few extra parts, I would probably use their seat. It looks amazing. Barracuda studios does a resin control stick that I think might be worth getting.

To Kotare, I personally have no problem with a delay, any reasonable customer should not object and if they do they should not be pre-ordering. I do not pre-order because I expect the model on a specific date, I do so to support Kotare models. If it takes more time so be it. If I were worried about it I would not pre-order. I normally never pre-order models because I can always buy them cheaper at my convince in the future. I pre-order from you to support your company in my little way. I do not hold you to a deadline although it is appreciated to know how things are going. Now I am really excited about that Hurricane and you can just post that pre-order now. Let me send you some money please.

And in any event, we have no control over it. I wrote my post in a bit of a state as I went to the tread looking for updates on the new kit and just found people complaining about 1/35 LSPs.

I ran the dollar to pound conversion and it was in that range for the U.S. not including shipping. I was a maybe at 300 but 400 I decided not to. Now on the Tempest he is doing that one I like enough I might pay up. For the work and the product I actulally don't think 400 unreasonable but it is a fair bit of money. So the exact conversion is 295 english pounds convert at 1.34 to the dollar so cost is $396 before shipping USD. On June 18, 2025.

If you have no objection to 1/35 LSP's then you are missing my point as I was addressing those who think a 1/35 plane is an anathema and comments that why don't the manufacturers just convert everything to 1/32 which is not a rare opinion on this forum.

I just read a Time article on this, and this operation looks like a masterpiece of long term tactical planning. It looks to me like the foundation of this operation was laid out over 1 to 2 years. Who knows how this plays out but the whole thing is pretty impressive. I hope we see more plane shots on this thread.

Here is what puts me off about 1/35. The two companies so far making fixed wing aircraft in 1/35 are new and seem to be determined to make the most complex kit possibly imaginable and skipping a provable focus on quality engineering first. They seem to want to impress me with how many parts they can put in the smallest possible confines, instead of making a kit I know I can build. As such I will take by contrast a Kotare kit all day long over what I am seeing so far in 1/35. I opened this thread today not to see a debate about the merits of 1/35 but seeing new postings hoped in vain that I would have shots of kit parts and see some real information on the development of the kit. At the moment I am not aware that there is even any meaningful cad images of the new Helldiver much less shots of plastic. I look foreword to seeing it, do I want one? I don't know. I have been confronting of late the idea that I am going to build a Zoukei Mura 190 kit. I look at the mountain of parts knowing that I intend to hide almost all of them and look at a build thread on here where the cover over one of the build legs does not fit perfectly. As such I know I will put months of effort into the kit only to have my build knocked down at some show because of some slight engineering issue that I failed to solve because the manufacturer did not care to engineer it well to begin with but gave me detail over quality. Now maybe I should just go build something by Tamiya and quit complaining for the day. But too many parts and too much complexity is making grouchy today.

1/35 scale is for purposes of armor and diorama done and dusted, it is the established scale for the majority of modelers. Just take a look at the depth of accessories, markings, diorama materials and so on that are out there for any subject on scalemates. I bet the 1/35 Tamiya Tiger could have 100 cross references and it is not even the state of the art kit and has been surpassed by newer offerings. On the other hand 1/32 scale planes is a tiny market by comparison to 1/35 armor. Just go to a show and look at the armor and aircraft tables, there will normally be a lot of 1/35 armor and a few by comparison 1/32 planes. Or simply compare the 1/32 kits databases to the 1/35 armor databases. We have reached the point in 1/35 armor where many obscure items are being tooled, just look at the Miniart catalog. 1/32 planes we can see from everyones wish list has not even scratched the surface. If you look at 1/35 armor there is probably a major manufacturer who has tooled every armor or vehicle kit that you can imaging and you have to go down some real rabbit holes to find something remotely significant that has never been done. I have Cody Greylands armor modeling book from 25 years ago and lots of kits he is featuring in that book were partially scrath build or from aftermarket upgrades. Today I think everything in that book has long since been released in plastic. As such suggesting that there should be some form of conversion to 1/32 is as absurd as suggesting that 1/32 kits should all be recalled by the manufacturers and issued in 1/35. You all keep debating this but it is a pointless waste of time, if you don't like 1/35 planes great, I don't know if I do either, but 1/35 is hands down the dominant form of military modeling and that is not debatable, and it is not changing. If you think this is something that is really up for discussion you are spending too much time on this forum dedicated to our mutual passion of large scale planes and you need to venture out into the rest of the scale modeling world and realize that there is a lot more too it. I strongly recommend perusing a Miniart catalog for a while.

I was considering this, but the dollar has weakened a lot to the pound. I think I will pay it for the Typhoon but letting this one go. I know it is expensive but quality for the money it looks good.

There is a show in Australia or New Zealand they mentioned they are showing test shots or something, nothing about the production kit or having any for sale, as such I think it a ways off yet. Maybe we see them ship in August. But i am not betting on seeing mine before then.

AFV modeler makes the zimmerit roller for 1/16 scale.

If you go Andys hhq 1/16 tiger AFV modeler makes some conversion parts, you could get to at least a mid production from there. If you bargain hunt you might get it done much cheaper than trumpeter and less of a mess than the tamiya one. I built that Tamiya kit as a teenager and remember it to be a very nice build out of the box. I know you can get some things to make it better like tool clamps and engine screens. Personally i would improve the Tamiya kit the easy way and convert the Andys HHQ kit to a later version.