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9 hours ago, Aeronut said:

As did the Frog Wellington via a number of Russian labels

If it happens, Russian money is as good as Chinese or anybody else's for that matter!

To the company (or receiver) it's cash in the bank for an asset, to the purchaser, hopefully it means a return.

How the moulds are treated once purchased is their's and their's alone.

 

 

 

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On 15/2/2018 at 9:35 PM, 71chally said:

People have been asking Airfix for a new tool Buccaneer for years, and a Canberra, their answer has always been as your last sentence reads.

They gave us a new Canberra, in two scales, unfortunately riddled with errors and very toy like in its finish.

 

They have finally issued a British Phantom, but even this lags behind a 30 year old kit in detail and surface finish.

 

I've got to the point that I prefer other manufacturers to release these things now, which is thankfully where Tanmodel will step in with their 72/48 scale Buccaneers.

 

 

I find it strange that the Buccaneer is so poorly represented in kits. To my mind it (and the Canberra) were true world leading combat aircraft from the British aircraft industry, the Buccaneer deserved far more export success than it did find.

The Airfix 48th Buccaneer is to my mind a nice kit, and represented Airfix at one of their pinnacles, it can be a pain to build - banana jet, banana model.

72nd kits are woefully lacking, the Frog, Matchbox and Airfix kits are ancient and basic, however as proved by Perdu and Massimo in the current aircraft work in progress forum, they are certainly workable.

The 1/100 scale Tamiya Bucc is meant to me quite reasonable, though never clapped eyes on it myself.

It would be great to see a new 72nd kit, hopefully molded in such a way that an S.1 can be modeled from the box.

 

 

 

 

IMHO the Buccaneer was represented in pretty much the same way that most other British combat aircrafts of the same era were, no more and no less.

Frog did a kit, Airfix did a kit (actually two if we include the old NA.39), Matchbox did a kit. Then someone, in this case Airfix, did a 1/48 kit. Finally Tan Model announced new kits in both scale to come in the next couple years.

Lightning: Airfix did a kit, Hasegawa did a kit (later modified by Frog), Matchbox did a kit. Then Airfix did a 1/48 kit. And recently the Hornby era Airfix did a new 1/72 kit.

Hunter: Frog did a kit, Airfix did a kit, Matchbox did a kit. Then Academy did a 1/48 one and Revell a modern 1/72 one, until the recent announcement of a new 1/48 kit by Airfix.

Canberra: Airfix did a kit, Frog did a kit, Matchbox did a kit.. then Airfix did new 1/72 and 1/48 kits.

And I could go on.

Of course there have also been various vacforms, resin and short run kits of the same subjects (Aeroclub, HiPlanes, CMR, Classic Airframes...) but in terms of mainstream really the number of kits is pretty much the same. And it's not high.

 

 

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I probably should have been more specific, but certainly within a longish timeline the Buccaneer has been ignored. 

In the last thirty years there have been new 1/72 Lightnings by Airfix & Trumpeter, a Hunter from Revell and a Canberra by Airfix.  In 48th the same subjects have been covered by Airfix, Academy/Italeri and Airfix, all the those kits have been released in an era of 'modern' tooling.

There hasn't been a new Buccaneer 72nd since 1989, and even that was loosely based on an ancient 1960s kit, the two other 72 Buccs were 1970s.

 

Getting back to an earlier comment,

I remember when the Airfix 48th Bucc came out in the mid 1990s and it was felt that it was a new high for Airfix, surface finish/detail and overall accuracy was good, especially coming from a manufacturer that at that point was not particularly known for that, it seemed to lead the way for the same scale Lightning and Spitfire/Seafire kits that followed.

It was unfortunate that many kits seemed warped which made the major components harder to join, not sure if that was down to the new technology or storage.

To me this kit is still better than some of the other far more modern releases by Airfix, such as the Canberra.

Personally, I think if this kit was released today (perhaps with a light going over!) it would sell well.

 

 

 

Edited by 71chally
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And that really is the issue. There are some who model and will refuse to buy anything that isn't ridiculously easy to throw together and there are others who will buy the best kit of a subject they want.

 

I have 3 Airfix 1/48 Buccs in the stash and at least 2 Canberras. They do build up ok. Not perfect, but no worse than some very modern Chinese releases get forgiven for.

 

The world market just consumes more of other subjects than cold war British jets. With the Hunter as a notable exception and some Venoms, our exports of jets has always been limited compared to American and Russian aircraft. There are only so many ways you can model a green and grey jet.

 

The simple fact is that most who really want a big Canberra or Buccaneer already have at least one to build. Those who insist they are above building such flawed kits as the existing ones tend to specialise in finding fault with things and there's a high chance they still wouldn't buy a new tool one due to their uncontainable disappointment with some perceived imperfection they'd no doubt discover.

 

Could Airfix really sell that many more retooled Buccaneers or Canberras compared to countless other subjects they do not have a product covering to invest their limited resources in? I doubt it, and apparently so do Airfix.

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On 15/02/2018 at 8:35 PM, 71chally said:

They have finally issued a British Phantom, but even this lags behind a 30 year old kit in detail and surface finish.

Whilst I agree that the Fujimi British Phantom is a gem of a kit, state of the art in its day and has aged very well (the kits do have fit issues and take a bit of work to get together in my experience) - whilst some of the R&D omissions were disapointing, to say the new Airfix Phantom FG.1 lags behind in detail seems a little harsh. I suppose it depends on what is meant by detail but with the alternate parts included I think you could probably build this kit 20 times and not have two in the same configuration. Added to which there is nice cockpit detail, full intake trunking, extended flight refuelling probe and a detailed radar unit. With the forthcoming FGR.2 incarnation almost every stores option too. I quite like the surface detail too as it happens - beauty in the eye of the beholder I suppose. 

 

I would certainly take an Airfix Buccaneer S.2 of equivalent standard (and by the same designer...)  any day of the week - in fact my mouth is watering at the prospect :thumbsup:. Has to be a dead cert for their Cold War series in the next couple of years... doesn't it?

Edited by RichG
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3 hours ago, RichG said:

Whilst I agree that the Fujimi British Phantom is a gem of a kit, state of the art in its day and has aged very well (the kits do have fit issues and take a bit of work to get together in my experience) - whilst some of the R&D omissions were disapointing, to say the new Airfix Phantom FG.1 lags behind in detail seems a little harsh.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that bit,

Having the two kits next to each other, the crisp surface detail, plastic quality  and smaller components detail (U/C, doors etc) is superior on the Fujimi kit.  Every one of the the kits I have built has fallen together without any fit issues - they were all the original early '90s releases though.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that overall that the Fujimi kit is better than the Airfix kit, the new kit has some cracking features including the deployable control surfaces and the full depth intakes and the far superior decal sheet.

 

It all comes down to what we want as modellers, the Airfix Phantom looks to build into a nice looking finished model and will sell in spades.

Personally speaking though, I prefer the crisp detail of the older kit and can go without looking down the intakes and cutting and resetting control surfaces. 

The new kit isn't even any cheaper than buying a Fujimi, and I think it says something that there isn't a raft of Fujimi kits appearing on EBay, such as when other new kits have been released.

I will do a comparison Fujimi/Airfix WIP build one day.

 

Back to the Bucc, I do think a new release would sell well, certainly as well as the British Phantoms and the upcoming Hunter, I'm sure a modern tool 72nd example would fly off the shelves as easily as say Gnats and Sea Vixens, more so surely!

I also think that the existing 48th Bucc would sell well still, there is no opposition for it, it's still a popular subject, and it is quite hard to get at a reasonable price - I would certainly like to buy another.

 

Just my thoughts.

 

Edited by 71chally
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FG.1

I wish Airfix would do a catapult section of Ark Royal like Italeri did for the Nimitz Class Carriers...together with a few deck crew (and two pilots sitting in a/c)

I could build their FG.1 on the catapult....and may be sooner or later a Buccaneer as well.

As is, to me the launching configuration of the kit is rather useless - unless one does a lot of scratchbuilding.

...and I still do not know what to do about the missing vents (....this really bothers me....see what eduard offers in their upcoming PE sets.

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On ‎16‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 2:35 AM, NAVY870 said:

Its because the single seaters are rubbish.

Proper Venoms have two seats and deck hooks B)

two seat Venoms are for those who are afraid to fly alone - long life the single seat Venom! ;-)

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8 hours ago, Ingo Degenhardt said:

FG.1

I wish Airfix would do a catapult section of Ark Royal like Italeri did for the Nimitz Class Carriers...together with a few deck crew (and two pilots sitting in a/c)

I could build their FG.1 on the catapult....and may be sooner or later a Buccaneer as well.

As is, to me the launching configuration of the kit is rather useless - unless one does a lot of scratchbuilding.

...and I still do not know what to do about the missing vents (....this really bothers me....see what eduard offers in their upcoming PE sets.

Chap, the Airfix magazine did a guide to scratch building a catapult section for the Phantom recently.  And whilst not for me, it seemed quite do-able.

 

Here you are:

 

https://shop.keypublishing.com/issue/View/issue/AMW084/airfix-model-world-november-2017

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6 hours ago, WildeSau75 said:

two seat Venoms are for those who are afraid to fly alone - long life the single seat Venom! ;-)

And our wings fold up because we selected it, not because they felt like it B)

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9 hours ago, NAVY870 said:

And our wings fold up because we selected it, not because they felt like it B)

good countered mate ;-). When we decide to fly over water, we trust that we get back - we not need an emergency landing place aka carrier ;-)

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17 hours ago, WildeSau75 said:

good countered mate ;-). When we decide to fly over water, we trust that we get back - we not need an emergency landing place aka carrier ;-)

Runways are for kids and Crabs.

Real men land on ships.

FLY NAVY 

B)

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Quote
6 minutes ago, NAVY870 said:

Real men land on ships.

 

I'll tell take to the old boy I know who as a soldier put his Beaver AC1 down on a carrier because a General needed to talk to the Admiral on board. As he puts it "considering the size of some of the strips we operated out of, the boat was quite large"

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Definitely agree on the 1/48 Buccaneer. I search eBay every week, have bid for one about ten times, even that older S.2D version, but give up at £40 - prices like that suggest they must still be well in demand, so a re-release would be very welcome. And a 1/48 RAF Phantom to go with it!

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44 minutes ago, Lord Riot said:

Definitely agree on the 1/48 Buccaneer. I search eBay every week, have bid for one about ten times, even that older S.2D version, but give up at £40 - prices like that suggest they must still be well in demand, so a re-release would be very welcome. And a 1/48 RAF Phantom to go with it!

Rumor has it the molds of the 1.48 Buccaneer are damaged beyond repair. Not such a big issue, as the kit had rather poor detail in many areas and a frightening fit. I had two - the first was pretty much warped. So much I tried a daring solution, which resulted in a completely wrecked kit. The second one still waits for my guts to return. A new tool would be welcome - although this applies to a number of 1:48 kits from the 70s to 80s

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I hadn't heard that about the molds being damaged, but have seen something about them possibly being outside of the current Airfix ownership?

 

BTW, for those of you sat on a 48th Buccaneer stash, I will gladly lighten the load for you!

Edited by 71chally
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Not damaged beyond repair (as far as I know) nor outside Airfix's control, however due to the serious warpage and fit issues Airfix have decided not to re-release it.

 

Quote

I have heard back from our Development team and, unfortunately, it will not be possible to add this tooling to KitStarter. This is because there is an inherent quality problem with the fuselage mouldings.

 

So basically they don't want to have to deal with 1000s of complaints

Edited by Dave Fleming
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1 hour ago, Dave Fleming said:

So basically they don't want to have to deal with 1000s of complaints

Looking at the various threads throughout Britmodeller Dave, I cannot imagine anyone who is a member of Britmodeller ever even considering complaining about a defective Airfix kit - perish the thought

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12 hours ago, NAVY870 said:

Runways are for kids and Crabs.

Real men land on ships.

FLY NAVY 

B)

you got that wrong - runways are for Spidercrabs - run away from those who need a full ship length to land 😉

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7 hours ago, WildeSau75 said:

 run away from those who need a full ship length to land 😉

Not us

 

FRhiq0H.jpg

CPOATA Laurie Hillier Photo

 

Edited by NAVY870
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Mike,

may be the pilot used to have big brass ones, he's now singing falseto!

That would at least mean a 'Hat on', NO tea and biccies 'interview' with his Sqn. C.O.

AFTER 'bats' had had a word in his shell like!

 

Paul

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