thierry laurent

This is even simpler as I think the decals had already been released by ZM as a separate aftermarket set. So, except the very nice box art I'm not sure there is anything new...

By far the most complex set was the corrected variramp and accurately sized air intakes! That was a nightmare that took me two months of evenings to get correct and symetrical parts! Never again!!!

Thanks! Harold did the nose. I made the rest!

The wiper was part of the conversion. I did it to help Harold.

Indeed. I made the masters of close to all the AMS Phantom sets as well as the CBU bombs and A-4C wiper and wheels.

Your options are Tamiya (F-4E), Tamiya (F-4C/D) or Tamiya (F-4J)! The OOP Revell F-4E may depict one of the rare slat wings planes used very late in the war and the RF-4C one Recce bird. However you will have to find AM decals and both kits ask for far more work than the Japanese options. The Academy re-release of the Revell F-4E has SEA schemes AND the hard wings with TISEO. However, it has the same issues than the original kit.

Airscale? I guess you meant Aerocraft?

Happy birthday from the land of beers! ;-)

Happy birthday John!

The problem is simple. You cannot obtain a product break even status without selling a minimum of some thousands of boxes if you are releasing an injected plastic model. Finding 500 customers is easy and even 1000 stays rather easy. This is the LSP market hard core. You can possibly reach 2000 but this will ask for some additional months and is already conditioned by some attractiveness factors. Further, you are entering into the danger zone! According to the topic kits may sell like hot cakes... or not! This is the critical issue as this market segment is very unstable but required to reach the initial profitability. A company like WnW understood it and developed a clever marketing policy that was offer rather than demand driven. This was efficient up to some level. However, even that approach could not result in miracles! For instance, think of the early Gotha seaplane prototype. So, marketing gods have quite often strange ideas when you look at them from the hard core perspective! This explains why a company like Jetmads using a far cheaper production model only does short run releases and for two to three times the price of an equivalent injected model. We may finally get an injected F-84F because companies cannot only produce Spitfires, Mustangs, Me109s and Fw-190s forever but when is a big question! The lowest is the perceived probability of profitability of some releases, the lowest will be the frequency of such releases between best sellers. This is a pity but is an economical fact...

Possible but they are directly sold by Amazon in their Starrett range. So this is weird. I just checked and it looks he was not the only one who had been burnt! https://www.amazon.com.be/Starrett-S166Z-Octagonal-Insulated-Handles/dp/B000KYOF6G

Well this used to be true. Alas it looks the quality went down drastically. A friend of mine purchased last year a set from Amazon for more than 100€ and he send it back as the quality of parts machining was clearly worse than the one of far cheaper Chinese tools! Too bad as Starrett was known as a quality tooling brand.

I love such projects! I don't know if you know it but there is one error in the instructions and parts of the stabs of all AIMS sets for late Ju88 & 188. John posted a correction on his Facebook page.

Actually it had not been correctly packaged to avoid the risk of being crushed (too souple box). The guy who printed them will send me a new one with another order I made. I just wanted to know if this extreme case was still repairable!

Hi, I had the same problem. The only solution was to fold very progressively to avoid breakage. When plastic color becomes whitish you are entering into the danger zone. If the angle is too small, I would try that: do cautiously a series of very thin cuts with a razor saw on the internal side of the belt (where you want to fold). This should help. However, globally, it is better avoiding such plastic belts in such cases... Thierry

Ooops! Sorry! You're right! I corrected my text.

Hi Eli. Various 1/32 sets were released but the choice is quite limited. I have a Cutting edge one (it includes Tumbleweed), the Print scale set mentioned hereabove and at least another one but cannot remember which one without checking. HTH Thierry

Retrospectively, when I'm looking at the picture of that tank with the big German crosses I've the strange feeling it is coming right out of a sixties Sergeant Rock comics book! I'm wondering if this was not the reference used by the Tamiya designer of that era... P.S. I corrected my text as it was obviously sergeant Rock rather than the famous sergeant York!

Hi guys, Printed SLA resin parts can be very nice but they have a major drawback: they are VERY brittle! So, if you do not handle or package them cautiously, here's what you can get: Ouch! Useless to say this is not a glamorous state... My single part was a close to twenty parts puzzle! However, do not dispair, even in such a case! Even in extremely messy situations, it is generally possible to repair things. Indeed, if the printed resin is brittle, it generally breaks in a "clean" way. This means that if you can identify the different pieces and where they should be to rebuild the full part, you can reassemble the broken pieces as a minikit! Simply take your time, only use very thin CA glue and you will be able to recreate a correct part. This asks for time and the part may not be as good as the initial one without sanding, priming and so on... Nonetheless, this may save a modelling project! Here's the result after a short hour of work. I just tried to repair it as a challenge because the producer will send me a replacement part. However, I was amazed at what can be done with some patience! Last, keep in mind I just did a quick sanding of the seams and did not allocate further time to remove the surface blemishes resulting from the repair process!

Hi, Actually the history about Tamiya and the 1/35 scale is a little bit more complex. The Panther A tank most people are refering to is NOT the initial 1/35 Tamiya Panther tank. The original was actually made in 1961 whereas the well-known Panther A model was only made in 1968. Both were very different. You can see them on scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/tamiya-1-german-tank-panther--347436 and https://www.scalemates.com/kits/tamiya-mt223-panzerkampfwagen-v-panther--347433 If you think the 1968 one vaguely looked like a Panther, I can tell you the 1961 kit was FAR worse! Simply look at that after a deep breath! Note the "Tiger II" decal probably explains they did not really know what was an actual Panther tank... Not really surprising because the Tamiya models of the sixties were only made from... some pictures! They only started measuring full scale vehicles from the seventies. Moreover, Tamiya 1/35 standardization only arrived at the end of the sixties decade. It even looks they did not create the first 1/35 model but this is not surprising because at that time there were models in close to every scale! During the sixties they also released AFVs in other weird scales such as 1/21, 1/50 or 1/55! It is true they were the first to decide to standardize progressively AFVs models in 1/35 and for whatever reason this was based on approximate measurements of that inital Panther dog. Useless to say that the initial so-called 1/35 Panther tank kit had not the same hull dimensions than the 1968 one that was still inaccurate! The first relatively correct 1/35 Panther tank with regard to hull and turret main dimensions was released by Nichimo in 1974 and... it was also motorized! So the batteries size were not the only reason for the dimension inaccuracies of such sixties models. There were other examples of successive generations of Tamiya 1/35 models of the same AFV that had clearly different dimensions. I think this was just a product of the time as models were intended for children and accuracy was not really a major criterion... This hopefully evolved but that scale stayed. Too bad as this is why we are now struggling between two scales!

Actually the Sunderland is a massive monster. This is not very visible because of the fuselage shape but it is even larger than the Stirling that was already far longer than the Lancaster and Halifax (both being quite similar): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_Halifax#/media/File:British_WW2_bombers_comparison.png

I would love one but I'm afraid of the price. I would not be surprised seeing that one above 800€...

Wow!!! It even includes clear parts!!!!

I think these are stencils for Greek Vipers. I may be wrong but I think they were grey.

There were various Daco 1/32 Viper sets with stencils. For instance, look for ASD3222. HTH Thierry