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Gigant

LSP_Members
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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    South Louisiana
  • Interests
    Building and collecting large scale model kits, classic cars, typical guy stuff.

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  1. Your addition with your excellent work has forced/inspired me to invest in the MENG kit as well as some stuff to attempt to build a version as well! I am now going to find out whether to thank or curse you! Top notch work!
  2. I am sure this is not the same as your case, but I have have had the USPS insist I personally received packages that they did not deliver to me at all.
  3. Well, thank you gentlemen for your encouragement for me to "venture out" a bit!
  4. They identify the bidders by listing them while giving you abbreviated versions of their e-mail address with "***'s" in it to protect his/her privacy.
  5. As I understand, starting with their Salmson biplane, practically all of WnW's kits have weak landing gear struts, wing sag, etc., which is the result of trying to make tiny detailed things like struts and wing attachment points exactly to scale out of soft plastic. Although I have bought a couple of their kits, the one that really scares me is their Bristol F2b. After building the old Aurora kit with the stubby fuselage stand-off struts for the lower wing attachment, I simply would not want the pain of figuring what type of fixture it would take to get a soft plastic WnW fuselage to not try to rotate on me while standing in them while the glue is setting up, in addition to the worry as to how substantial it will be for me to finish getting the upper wing with all of it's eight inter-plane struts and cabane struts to behave. Frankly, I see this trend as a "cop-out", where under the "true to exact scale drawings" caveat, they obviously do not take time to test-fit the parts to see how practical it would be for the average builder to assemble their kits without heavily investing in buying or making special jigs and fixtures, that have very limited use beyond a single build or two. IMHO, that is the main reason why most WnW's kits are still sitting around here and there unbuilt in their boxes, popping up on eBay and Amazon instead of showing up a built projects on model airplane websites.
  6. Rare Plane Detective (a used model kit dealer) listed one on eBay that ended this last weekend for the opening bid price of $777.00 and nobody bid on it! And his motto is "New kit prices have gone crazy" to attract you to his "previously owned" inventory! LOL Honestly, I quit buying his "fully inspected kits" long ago when I kept getting kits that were missing clear parts, landing gear struts, or the decals were already partly used for another kit the previous owner built. Similarly, others list for over $1,000, and they are just sitting there. And frankly, because of the G.IV's history of the gas tanks catching on fire because they directly sat on the lower wing, if I were to pay any serious $$'s for one, I would prefer the improved G.V. I understand that because the engines' enclosures sit on the lower wings instead of struts, that that makes it easier to build then the G.V, but Aurora conquered that problem years ago when I originally built their 1/48th scale release. Their kit simply went together with minimal hassle. And since I have both the original Aurora and the later K&B G.V kits in my stash, I can see investing in any after-market mods necessary to make it more accurate then literally spending hundreds more for a product that being made from "soft plastic" needs the typical after-market white metal landing gear strut sets from the very start! And after you are done, it would best be donated to a museum somewhere because of its size. With their soft plastic, struts and attachment details so "historically perfect" that you would need special jigs to keep the alignment between the wings and struts, both huge size and price-tags keeps me from ever wanting it to travel from their hobby shelves to mine in my house.
  7. Honestly, it looks to me like they painted the patch job with chocolate brown.
  8. Like I noted above, I did talk on the phone to eBay's representative, and she took her time in noting everything I had to say, where I pointed out the "straw bidder's" questionable history. As well as fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission, it is against the law to refuse to sell anything offered to the public to anyone who has the money.
  9. Since Wingnut Wings went out of business, and the main hobby dealers no longer stock their kits, I thought I would pick up a kit of theirs while shopping on eBay for other old collectible kits. So I bid on a few kits from one seller, based on my Burns Guide, "PAK-20", and offered fair prices for each. After a short while, I get the notice that I was "out-bid" on two of them, one I did not care about, but the other I decided to look into. An "alternate bidder", literally bid like 12 times, and drove his bid price up to nearly double! I told this to a friend of mine, and he told me that it is a common practice on eBay for the seller to have a second account, or a buddy to drive the price up, to see if you will bite like fish. So then I spot a WnW Bristol Fighter kit, and the guy starts at a fair price, not ridiculously low like some, or high like Rare Plane Detective who was starting out asking $777.00 for a Gotha G IV (of course they got no bids on it). The next thing I know, I get a notice in my inbox, where the kit's price literally was driven up to nearly 2.5 times the starting price by a single "straw bidder"! Just to see for myself, I checked on the bidder's history and in all of his history as an eBay member, his total bidding history was 100% on this seller's kits ONLY! And since I wouldn't bite (I sent him a message telling I was not going to, and he responded by claiming he was not the "straw bidder"). He later that day claimed he sold the kit, and re-listed the SAME KIT later that day at the same starting price! So I sent him a message telling I would buy it for a fair price, and he literally told me he would not sell it to me for any price. So I reported him to eBay's service department and was told his refusal to sell at all was in violation of their policy. The nice thing was is their associate had actual access to his rude message to me, and she duly reported it.
  10. Ever consider doing the Zulu stand-off at the Battle of Rorke's Drift in January 1879, as depicted in the classic movie "Zulu"?
  11. Sorry about being away for so long. Honestly, with the COVID-19 compounding our personal health issues, as well as our family's basic supply problems, I have been very busy with domestic needs/decisions, etc., with little or no time for scale modeling. But, having been introduced to scale modeling over 60 years, ago, I have seen a thing or two come and go. I remember when back in the '60's Adams, an excellent mold maker, fell out with Revell and decided to take the molds made for them, and market several top-quality scale U.S. armor kits under their own name. Now that WnW has gone "ker-plunk", their Chinese mold-maker source has put out what was to be an excellent Fokker Triplane kit in 1/32, if not under their own label like Adams, someone they are already adjusted to dealing with in their own country. Frankly, having built many of the kits in either 1/48th or a larger scale, I viewed WnW, being dedicated to a single large, and sometimes cumbersome scale ("Honey, where can I put my finished Gotha G IV?"), as a higher-priced anomaly. Being an old Fokker Triplane fan, I decided to go ahead and buy the Meng Fokker Triplane, (along with a Special Hobby Nieuport 11) and I like it! I am aware of the spell that WnW cast on the large scale modelling community, but I still had trouble getting past the price tag. Now I understand, that unlike many others, when you bought a WnW kit, you had a very kit-builder friendly company behind the contents of the box. So I took it, that the high price kept the people employed who would generously send me spare decal sheets, etc. The extra price meant excellent customer service! But now that all you get is the kit as-is in the box, with no potential for replacement of messed-up decals or lost parts, it is interesting how individual kit hoarders are trying to gouge the unsuspecting on both ebay and Amazon. I see kits that have been opened being sold at new list prices, unopened kits being sold at prices inflated from their original MSRP list prices, all being sold from home-grown "cottage industry" sellers. Meanwhile they are failing to mention that there is not any sort of manufacturer "safety net", and when "push-comes to shove", will the individuals operating out of their houses selling through these virtual market places be willing to sacrifice a complete kit to resolve any customer service issues? From my experience in buying stuff through these medias, I seriously doubt it. This is like buying a Westinghouse washing machine kept in storage at its' MSRP, as though the company even existed anymore. When you consider the exhaustive "witch-hunt" required for getting any basic customer service for OOP kits, like broken or lost parts or factory decals for these as they need replacement; to even pay half of the former list price barely makes sense. With any luck, perhaps Meng, or better still, some European kit maker like Roden or Eduard will pick up the molds and re-issue them for us, adding a nice 1/32 scale line to their others. Now I gotta decide whether to do the triplane or the Special Hobby Nieuport 11 first.
  12. Excellent job working with the old Roden kits and their accuracy issues!
  13. I finally got my Trumpeter 1/32 P-47D Thunderbolt Razorback today from Squadron.com via FedEx:
  14. I have yet to see a better build of one of my all-time classic favorites!
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