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1/72 - Curtiss P-40 Warhawk/Kittyhawk by Special Hobby - P-40D/E/F/N/K/M/Mk.IA/Mk.III/Mk.IV released - new P-40F/L boxing


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What great news, BUT....... what  a missed opportunity! The "Achilles heel" of nearly every P-40 kit (that is not a P-40N) is the rear view panels, left and right, behind the canopy. It is virtually impossible to get a good tight join between the clear panel and the adjacent fuselage areas without glue or filler or paint leaking behind through capiallary action, thereby ruining the model. You have to accept an unrealistic gap rather than tight panel line of the actual aircraft.

 

This problem is easily solved with clever mold design. One just has to use the basic shape of the "N" for the canopies of all the earlier marks (from the "E" on) and provide the canopy framing  of the various marks with engraving. Besides yielding a much more buildable model for those of us of average ability, this approach results in a simpler and less expensive mold since the same fuselage piece can be used for the M and the N and the M canopy can be used all the way back to the E.

 

This mold design approach was used for a 1/48 kit many years ago by a short lived and sadly forgotten (by me, at least) Japanese firm. I hope is not to late for SH to make the change and get rid of the raggy joint that you can see on the test shot. SH is one of my favorite companies and, based on recent issues such as the Barracuda, the kits will surely be very nice. With just a little change in mold design and a set of masks SH could solve the eternal problem of the P-40 kit, that miserable rear quarter panel join. Let's hope they do..

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56 minutes ago, Trenton guy said:

What great news, BUT....... what  a missed opportunity! The "Achilles heel" of nearly every P-40 kit (that is not a P-40N) is the rear view panels, left and right, behind the canopy. It is virtually impossible to get a good tight join between the clear panel and the adjacent fuselage areas without glue or filler or paint leaking behind through capiallary action, thereby ruining the model. You have to accept an unrealistic gap rather than tight panel line of the actual aircraft.

 

This problem is easily solved with clever mold design. One just has to use the basic shape of the "N" for the canopies of all the earlier marks (from the "E" on) and provide the canopy framing  of the various marks with engraving. Besides yielding a much more buildable model for those of us of average ability, this approach results in a simpler and less expensive mold since the same fuselage piece can be used for the M and the N and the M canopy can be used all the way back to the E.

 

This mold design approach was used for a 1/48 kit many years ago by a short lived and sadly forgotten (by me, at least) Japanese firm. I hope is not to late for SH to make the change and get rid of the raggy joint that you can see on the test shot. SH is one of my favorite companies and, based on recent issues such as the Barracuda, the kits will surely be very nice. With just a little change in mold design and a set of masks SH could solve the eternal problem of the P-40 kit, that miserable rear quarter panel join. Let's hope they do..

Hi TG and all,

 

I think M windscreen had the low-vision window on the left hand side of the windscreen as on the N.

 

IIRC it was Mauve who had that excellent design with the rear quarter lights. I ful.ly agree that it is the best way to solve this problem.

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

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7 hours ago, occa said:

We need an M version also ...

 

Well it does say all Allison engined P-40's from E to N, so to me that means E, K, M and N.

Edited by Tbolt
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14 hours ago, Tbolt said:

 

Well it does say all Allison engined P-40's from E to N, so to me that means E, K, M and N.

Ah I see, that's good!

The slash in the title here fooled me a bit ... it should be E-N

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Awesome, I regard the P-40 in the same light as the Hurricane, not the best of WW2 fighters, a bit underrated but they certainly did a sterling job and the contribution of such aircraft and crews deserves merit. This should hopefully mean we don't need the Academy kits (not that I dislike them but they do have pants decals) and we'll get a state of the art P-40.

 

If anyone from Special Hobby reads this or someone has 'the ear' of Special Hobby, please but options for bombs in the kits! I have most of the existing Special Hobby and Sword P-40 kits and they only come with the drop tank. The other P-40 kits (like Academy and Hasegawa) come with a single US style bomb as an option, it would be great if they contained British bombs as well, like a 250 and 500lb bomb, especially those with Desert markings!

 

thanks

Mike

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  • 2 weeks later...
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I'm pretty sure the 2-in-1 box has been around for a while, I bought one in September

Their F looks like a nice kit, looking forward to more variants.

Have to say that I'm a bit surprised that no big company has done a new P-40 in decades, apart from the Airfix B

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Depends what you mean by "big company".  There are only a handful of the traditional mass-market companies left, and some of them have had quiet decades in the last 2 or 3, others don't have a particularly strong WW2 range.  So under natural rotation, it'd be a while before another P-40 appeared from one of them anyway.  If you look at companies producing a large number of subjects then Special Hobby comes in under that category, and there have been other P-40s from less active sources.  However, that doesn't stop anyone active enough to post on this board keeping up with releases.  If you want a generic P-40, they've been around.  If you want a particular variant, then you may be out of luck, but you will anyway even from BIG companies..

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2 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

Yes, Academy did, but that was almost 20 years ago...

 

20 minutes ago, Work In Progress said:

 

Which is not "decades".

 

Well 20 years would generally count as two decades!

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11 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

 

I'm pretty sure the 2-in-1 box has been around for a while [...]

 

 

You're right. In fact, I think the other two boxes have been around for a while too.

 

Edit: I'm right (for once), they've been around since 2008, according to  Scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/249820-special-hobby-sh72149-p-40f-warhawk

Edited by Beard
To insert additional information and correct punctuation.
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Hi

Arent  we talking about different variants here - the new P-40 described at the top are Allison engined planes - the P-40F/L  at the bottom are Packard-Merlin engined variants.  The Special Hobby announcement was for the Allison powered variants which I don't think they have done before.

cheers

At least I think that's what it is ;)

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For big companies I mean companies like Revell, Italeri, Airfix and similar, companies with a good distribution that are likely to be found in every hobby shop.

Sure Hasegawa have had 2 P-40s in their catalogue for many years, Academy followed at some point and yes, I forgot Hobbyboss and their Easy Kits (although IIRC their P-40E and N are heavily influenced by the Academy ones).

Since the P-40 was used in large numbers during the war and was quite popular with modellers in the past, I'd have expected for example Revell to replace their ancient tool (they only reboxed the Vista K for a short time) when they issued their line of single seat WW2 fighters. Italeri has a P-51 and other WW2 fighters but never touched the P-40, Hasegawa never felt the need to replace theit admittedly still decent kits and Tamiya gave us other types but not a P-40 (and they may never do).

Nothing against the kits made available by Special Hobby and other Czech manufacturers, I have SH's recent F and is a lovely kit and I don't mind building kits from the likes of Sword and AZ. My comment was not aimed against these companies but expressed my surprise at not having seen that many kits of the P-40 compared to other WW2 types.

 

P.S. while Special Hobby first issued a P-40F several years ago, the kits shown in this thread are recent moulds, the older kits were very different and still old school short runs. These new ones don't differ much from a Revell or Airfix kit

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At first sight, looks like  a well researched subject. Two types of wheels, two types of propellers , seats and dashboards. Generic cockpit sides.( Not that real important in 1/72 scale !)

 

Just hope they will add the front air intake triple 'tunnel' to fil this big mouth. But maybe this rests on another sprue or will be available later in resin ?.

 

But IMHO these WWI trenches  are spoiling this otherwise nice effort, or are these only early test shots ?.

 

I'll wait and see.

 

Just my 2 cents.

:wonder:

Madcop

 

 

 

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^^ ... also the cockpit floor should be flush with the uppersurfaces of the wing even if you won't notice that small step when it's built.

 

Still looks like a very good model series nevertheless, I am looking forward to it

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