spruecutter96

Bump 25/3/25.

I've read that the Tonka crew got in very hot water for this photo. How true is this? To be honest, I don't know, but it sounds pretty likely. Cheers. Chris.

About ten or so years ago, Airfix's owners (Hornby) were £30 Million in the red. In the face of that, can you blame anyone for wanting Airfix to produce kits that will actually sell and not just sit in a dusty warehouse for decades? That fact is, we now live in an age in which models are produced of subjects that could only have been dreamt about 25 years ago. The variety of available subjects has exploded in recent times. We should count ourselves lucky... Cheers. Chris.

I hadn't sold anything on E-Bay recently, up until this afternoon (Thursday 20th March). The two items I did manage to flog both had a £2.70 "Delivery Label" fee subtracted from the final selling price. E-Bay claim that I had selected the Simple Delivery option when I listing them (utter rubbish - I did not). I've had to cancel both transactions and give the buyers their full money back. I have never used any of E-Bay's delivery services and I never will. I tend to use Royal Mail, despite the many issues it has and general expense. E-Bay now have you over a barrel as a private-seller. They will not release the buyer's address to you, unless you use the Simple Delivery service. This new rule, combined with the equally mercenary "Buyer Protection Fee" situation, has now rendered E-Bay as a non-viable place to sell, from my point-of-view. Both new rulings are blatant examples of corporate greed and - I believe - will force a great many private sellers to abandon E-Bay as a selling platform. I would take a guess that the company feels it made a big mistake in getting rid of the traditional Private Sellers Fees and has introduced these new measures to claw some of their money back. When you add in the fact that the British government now has a legal right to see all of E-Bay's private-seller financial records for the purposes of taxation, this site has become a genuinely toxic place to be. E-Bay used to be an excellent resource for selling your unwanted, personal items. It's now totally ruined. A great shame. Chris. PS: The UK is E-Bay's second largest market (the US is the first, unsurprisingly). E-Bay pays a TINY amount of tax in the UK, because their official UK headquarters are based in Switzerland. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Bump 20/3/25.

Bump 20/3/25.

Bump 20/3/25.

A word of warning to anyone who still uses E-Bay to sell privately (there must be someone still out there)... E-Bay are now effectively insisting that you print out a "delivery label" and pay them directly to post an item. Using your own postage set-up has been removed. This is ridiculous, unjustified and just plain wrong. After the disaster of the "Buyer Protection" fee, this is the final indignity. After nearly 23 years of buying and selling on the 'Bay, it's obvious to me that E-Bay is more hassle than it worth, now. I'll will be cancelling my account shortly. There are many, much better websites to sell on. Chris.

My pleasure. If you can ever get to Bovvers for "Tankfest"- it's a wonderful show. Pre-book your tickets several months in advance, though, as it sells out on a regular basis. Chris. PS: The wife could always take a look around "Monkey World", which is a mile or two from the tank museum. Not been myself, but have read it's well worth a visit.

Paid a fiver to watch it on Amazon last night. Not a complete disaster, but not a classic, either. Looked very expensive to make, if a bit silly in places (Great White sharks swimming around in the Colisseum's fighting-arena, anyone? Possibly not entirely historically accurate...) As others have commented, not as good as the original. I thought that some of the dialogue seemed way too modern for its own good, but we probably have the I-phone generation to thank for that one. This is a bit ironic, as Tik Tok and YouTube seem to have made the idea of a conventional feature-film simply "too long" for some modern youths. A real shame, if it's true. Also, Paul Mescal's accent (the "Gladiator" himself) seemed to change from one scene to the next. One minute he sounded vaguely Irish (his real voice), other times kind of Northern British, some other scenes he seemed "generic mid-European". This was something that could have been very easily fixed during the post-production, dialogue recording sessions. I would rate it a 4-out-of-10 (must try harder). Cheers. Chris.

Hi, Morantbay. I apologize if any of the following information is well known to you. If you don't mind a bit of a drive, I would thoroughly recommend a visit to the Hannants London shop. It's a small shop but it has one ENORMOUS advantage for the avid modeller. If you order anything from the massive main-warehouse and ask them to deliver it to the London shop, you will be charged 10% less than the catalogue-price (as they don't have to pay any postage on the item). The stock at the warehouse is easily the most comprehensive you will find in Europe (I think it was in the region of 85,000 items at the last count, with more added every week). The selection of aftermarket resin, PE and decals is just plain astonishing. I think you have to open a Hannants account to use this facility, but my memory's pretty hazy on that one. You will need to order your stuff at least two weeks before you visit the shop. Make sure you type "Collect at the Colindale shop" for the delivery address (remove any mention of your home-address, as it will cause major confusion). Going to the North London shop also means you can visit the very good London RAF museum, which is virtually next-door to the shop. If you order online from the warehouse by midday on a Tuesday, then it should be in the shop by Thursday afternoon - it is always worth phoning the shop to check that it has got to them OK, however. Alternatively. you can visit the main-warehouse itself. It's in the east coast port of Lowestoft. By the way, if you are really into AFV's, then a visit to the Tank Museum at Bovington, Dorset, is a MUST DO. They claim to be the world's largest tank-museum and I can well believe that. There are not many museums where you can walk around a King Tiger, a running Tiger 1 (only on special occasions), Jadgtiger, Panther, Churchill Crocodile and very numerous other historical and contemporary armoured vehicles. You could spend all day there and probably not see everything. Hope this is some help to you. Enjoy your time over here. Cheers. Chris.

Bump 12/3/25.

Bump 12/3/25.

Bump 12/3/25.

Bump 12/3/25.

Thanks for the warning! Chris.

Bump 02/3/25.

Bump 02/3/25.

Bump 02/3/25.

I had a very good show today. Many thanks to Toby and all the Peterborough SMC members for all their efforts in organizing the event. Looking forward to 2026! Cheers. Chris.

As much as I get that these are starter kits, couldn't they have produced it with something nice-and-colourful on the tail. This scheme is about as "vanilla" as you can get. Seems like a missed opportunity, here. Would the production-costs really be any higher? Cheers. Chris.

It might be worth giving the David J. Parkins website a look. Other than that, I'm afraid I can be of no further help. Best of luck. Chris.

Bump 27/2/25.

Unpopular? Everyone on this website is essentially applauding machines which were designed to kill people (I very much include myself in this). The only exception to this is folks who are only enthusiastic about civilian gear (I'm sure there are some people like this out there and good luck to 'em). I think the Lancaster is a superbly-designed machine, but we must not forget than it was used to destroy innocent, civilian lives - as well the factories that produced our enemies war-fighting ability, his transportation network, command-centres and so on. No side was without blame or malice during the war. Millions of people died to satisfy the egos and obsessions of the ruling-politicians. Do the relatives of the dead take much solace from what happened? I suspect, probably not. Cheers. Chris.

Bump 24/2/25.