Dave Williams

Marconi RWR was retrofitted to both RN and RAF Phantoms in the mid-70’s.

I believe those will be only for the two-seater F/A-18F.

The seam between the turret halves is much less noticeable than the alignment pins.

Part of the issue is that the flatness carries over to the rear of the canopy. To do it right, you’d need a new canopy also. Plus, the error may go beyond the insert and to the section of the spine that’s molded as part of the upper fuselage. A replacement part may be a sort-of cosmetic fix, but can’t really make it accurate.

I bought the set direct from CE and remember the price as being around $450. Definitely over $400.

I belive you are talking about the Moebius Models Robot B9 kit.

I’m 100% sure the answer is no. Given the fact that they really don’t know what any actual J looks like (based on what they put in the box), it’s not likely that they have any idea what the differences are in the other models. We’ll get the D and it will end there for Hobby Boss.

They may be selling the kits, but very few people seem to be building them. Compare that to the number of people building, or have completed, the Ki-45, which is arguably a less popular aircraft in general than the B-24. People are undoubtedly buying the B-24 and holding off on builds hoping that the aftermarket comes out with fixes to some of the kit’s major problems. I guess as far as HB is concerned, it really doesn’t matter if people ever build the kits as long as they buy them, so by their standards, the kit is probably a success.

I have to disagree about the base. No one expects a plastic kit for only $50, but there is a limit on what people will pay for a conversion or a plastic kit. The number of people who would pay $200 for a good plastic kit is likely quite a bit different than those who would pay $450 for a conversion of a $100 kit that you need on top of that. A number of people here will easily drop one or two hundred dollars on a kit alone, as seen by the number of ZM, Tamiya, and HKM kits people are buying. Once you start talking $300-$400+ for a 1/32 F-4, the math changes considerably.

Most of the people who might buy the set probably don’t even know that HKM had even announced a kit, and based on this thread, many of those who do know don’t believe a kit is likely to come out soon, or even ever. I don’t see prices dropping until a kit actually hits the shelves.

While I personally don’t think the HKM kit will ever be released, I wouldn’t do it. Not saying this just because I’m sitting on an unbuilt Wild Hare kit (which I’d like see someone make better exhausts for), but I’m not sure it would be a good idea for business reasons. Even if HKM had never announced their kit, I think you’d be very hard pressed to get 50 people from this site interested enough to put up $200 in non-refundable funds for something sight unseen and with an indeterminate release date. 12-18 months may be a goal, but we all know that in real life stuff can happen, and if the timeline pushes out, people will start to gear antsy and the hate and discontent will start coming out.

Of course it’s unrealistic to assume that HB, or anyone, would include a ton of parts to make every possible permutation of the B-24J. That said, there are a couple of things they could have done quite cheaply that would have greatly increased the OOTB possibilities. One very big thing would have been to also include the Consolidated nose turret. How many extra parts would that be? Less than 10, I’d wager. For a lot of people that would probably be enough as they may not know the in and outs of the variants, but do know the difference in the nose turrets. The bombardiers side scanning window positions could have been flashed over in the kit nose to allow the many aircraft that didn’t have them to be easily made, and open the windows up if needed. Admittedly, this really isn’t a big problem since the existing clear windows can just be installed and puttied and painted over. For the navigator’s windows, they could have flashed over the opening for the wider square windows and included clear parts for the square windows, possible both flat and bulged. We’re talking maybe a dozen parts, which shouldn’t impact the price much at all.

Having the kit now, it appears that most, of not all, of the parts for all of the long nose options 3-6 are in the box. The kit as it comes has decals and instructions for options 5 and 6. Option 4 is basically option 5 with the rear machine gun installed and single outlet exhausts. The instructions have you install the magazine racks, but omit the actual magazines, and the gun. Both the gun and the extra magazines are on the sprues. Parts and instructions are included for both the single outlet exhausts and the individual “thrust” type exhausts, so that’s not an issue. Option 3 is Option 4 without the oblique guns, antenna mast moved forward, and a 20mm belly cannon. The kit has an extra center cockpit cover without the oblique cannon ports and a more forward mounting hole for the antenna mast. The kit also has the 20mm belly cannon on the sprues. The trapezoidal fuel tank fuel tank that would have previously been in the area where the oblique cannons were placed appears to be on the J sprue. The kit doesn’t have any short nose parts, so options 1 and 2 will have to wait for a later release.

Looking at the clear/colored parts breakdown, it appears there is a lot missing to do a second kit. In fact, I wouldn’t say it it was really that close. The kit has a total of 18 unique lettered sprues, and only 6 of them are duplicated in both clear and colored plastic. That means you need at least 12 more sprues. In reality it’s 14, because you need two of the E sprues for the engine, plus even though the F sprue is duplicated, it’s almost entirely clear parts like the small windows for the center cockpit cover and navigation lights, so the extra colored sprue is essentially useless. Basically the extra parts are enough to build an external body shell, without any engines, landing gear, canopy, or interior.

Acrylic lacquer like the Tamiya spray paints and primers, with the heavy lacquer smell, or the normal jar Tamiya acrylics, which have little to no smell? Tamiya acrylics aren’t all the same, so some clarity is needed when saying paints are like Tamiya acrylics.