Avia 199 conversion set

[Dric]

Hello all,

 

it's maybe a silly question .

Do you remember some months ago the review of the resin conversion set for the Hasegawa Me109 from Umiresin to build an Avia S-199 ?

 

Certain members of the forum announced their interest for this prometor kit (including me ).

 

But until now nothing new, did I miss something ?

 

I tried to contact UMI, but without success, I hope there is nothing bad about him

 

Cheers

 

Cedric

[Tim Carroll]

Hi Cedric,

Dave from UMI Resins quite suddenly and tragically passed away recently.

 

A great loss which would account for the sudden silence.

 

There is still available a conversion set from Ciro or on occasions from Arba on ebay.

Both are for the Hasegawa G14 kit.

 

Cheers

 

Tim

[LSP_Matt]

EEsh...Dave T missing leaves a big hole...

 

You hit the nail on the head Tim...the silence is deafening. Phew.

[Dric]

Ohh !

 

my thoughts go towards his family

[Derek B]

Hi Dric,

 

I'm sure that the feeling of Dave's passing away is mutually felt by all, but please don't feel embarassed about asking. I know that Vasko Barbic (Warbird Productions) had carried out some research in this area with an intention to producing just just such a kit - anyone wishing to see such a conversion kit may wish to drop him an e-mail with your ideas and thoughts. Vasko's e-mail address is: timsah@onetel.com

 

HTH

 

Derek

[mattlow]

Since this subject has been broached, I wonder if anyone has considered contacting UMI (Dave's wife) in a while and asking what will happen to the masters. Dave has produced a few excellent bits and bobs and I'd have thought it would really bug him to think that his project(s) were now stalled/mothballed.

 

Such an approach would have to come from someone who knew him and could put the whole case in the most sensitive way. I occasionally had email chats with him but it needs to be someone who could take up his work, finish it and put it into production - it'd be a nice tribute to his skills and the help and laughs he gave us all at times.

 

Of course there may be issues that I know nothing of. Finally, I'm not putting this forward because I desperately want a 'Mule', its not my modelling era, just hate to see Dave's work go to waste.

 

Matt

[alaninaustria]

I think it would be nice to see some of Dave's excellent work living on in our collections! He was a very helpfull and generous guy!

God Bless

Cheers

Alan

[Derek B]

I believe that Hacker was looking into this - I have offered to help in that cause as and when time allows. I have heard nothing since, so I'm not sure where we are with this at present.

 

Derek

[ssculptor]

David said that he was waiting for the new Avia book to be released from Israel before he would finish his Avia conversion molds and release the difinitive model. He was in contact with the author and was advised that the book would tell all when released. So David waited. There was some contorversy over exact details and this book would clear up the matter with facts, rather than conjecture.

Then David died.

Damn! I lost a really good friend.

 

I have some bad, overpriced conversions and some good conversion sets for the Israeli Avia.

Now the Avia book has finally come out and I got my copy yesterday. So I can get to work on the model.

The name of the book is Avia S-199 in Israeli Air Force Service 1948-1950 by Alex Yofe and Lawrence Nyveen. See address and details at the bottom of this posting.

 

When David died his family stepped in and took all his models and valuable stuff. Like vultures descending on a fresh kill. Still, they had to settle David's debts. According to Umi they did not get his molds, probably because they could see no use for them. I recall Umi saying that one of David's modeling friends from nearby was going to take a table at the next IPMS meet and sell off all the remining stuff, like books, and whatever for her. I believe Umi still has the molds but there are two factors here.

1) molds decay over time. Use the molds and cast in them right away. Because the longer you delay the weaker they get.

2) who is qualified to do the casting? David was a super mold maker and he had some techniques that were exclusive to him The average guy may not know how to successfully cast in David's molds.

 

Personally, I am staying well out of it. All we really have in life is our life, itself. When David died I put all his stuff out of my mind. When a person close to me dies I prefer to keep only the cherished memory of the person. Otherwise I would become one of the vultures, picking at his bones. Yes, I have some of his original models, which he sent me over the years. But I will not get involved in the "afterdeath feast". I gave Umi the names and phone numbers of guys who cast models and advised her to contact them. What she did I do not know.

 

My advice to anyone wanting to make a seriously accurate model of the Israeli Avia is to buy any one of the conversion kits floating around and buy the book. Then get some squadron putty, files, sandpaper and kit-bash the model. Like David, I believe that if you cannot scratch-build or Kit-bash then you should develop the skills. We were both old-timers who scratch-built models from the git-go.

 

If, however, you just enjoy assembling the model from parts made by others then go ahead and do that. It's a big world, room for all of us to have fun in our own way. Problem is, Davids molds may never get used again to cast parts. So unless you get the book and do some original work you may not get that accurate of a model.

 

By the way, I'm reading the book now and find that there were differences from one plane to the other in the Avias that Israel acquired. Surprise! There is more than one difinitive model to be built.

 

The book is published in the USA by White Crow Publications, P.O. Box 26901 San Jose, CA 95159

http://www.wings48.com/avia%20book.shtml

 

1) ISBN 0-9774627-1-4

Avia S-199 in Israeli Air Force Service 1948-1950

Authors: Alex Yofe and Lawrence Nyveen. $25

 

You can also get:

 

2) ISBN 0-9774627-0-6

Spitfire Mk.IX in Israeli Air Force Service 1948-1956

Author: Alex Yofe. $30

 

Write to the publisher to find out how much extra for postage.