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radub

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  1. Hi Rod, no need to apologise. :-) your point was fair. I was only trying to explain the situation with the battery hatch. This way a lot more versions can be made. Radu
  2. Hi Rod, I designed the CAD parts you see in those renderings posted by Freddie. As you may recall, you and I have been in touch while I was working on this design and all of your much-valued advice was followed. The enlarged port battery hatch is a known "issue" and was going to be "solved" during construction by adding a photo-etched panel. It would be too costly to make a separate port fuselage half in order to account for just one slightly larger engraved panel. ;-) HTH Radu
  3. In the book "Vanator" I mentioned the circumstances in the "seatbets" sub-chapter. In the summer of 1943, an I.A.R.80 flown by a German officer belly-landed on Galati airfield. The harness on early aircraft had no lap-belts and the shoulder straps were held back by a lockable cable connected to a bungee that, when unlocked, allowed the pilot a certain degree of movement forward. This "bungee-cable" idea was not unique to the I.A.R., for example the Sutton Harness featured a similar system, although the "early" I.A.R. and the Sutton harnesses were quite different in every other aspect. The "early" I.A.R. harness had a lot in common with the Italian system (but not identical) and I suspect there may be a link there. Anyway, in this belly-landing incident, the cable snapped, the pilot struck his head against the gun sight and was knocked unconscious. The plane caught fire and by the time the firefighting teams arrived, the pilot could not escape or be rescued. This pilot was a valuable instructor and had "connections" going to "very high levels", and that caused a serious row, which led to an urgent order to find a safer seat harness. A number of seat harnesses were tested and then the "winning type" was replaced on all aircraft in a great hurry. This "safe" type of harness is easy to identify in photos because the shoulder straps were bolted to the head armour. HTH Radu
  4. I know that details and changes can be maddening and I would not blame HB for getting details wrong. I tried to make sense of them in the books, but they still require a lot of attention from the modeller. I think that the most important thing to do when you build the model is to find photos of the actual machine you want to build. As improvements and changes were made, some of these were also retrofitted to earlier machines. So that is why you can see early-series machines featuring late-series details, such as carburetor intakes/filters, second oil cooler and the associated "cooling gills" behind exhausts, head armour, gun sights, etc. One such example is the type of seat belts - during the summer of 1943, ALL early-type seat belts were removed and replaced with the final type. I know this may be confusing, but to help make things clearer, please look at the aircraft by time-frame rather than by serial number. For example, a machine from the first series photographed in 1944 may contain late-series retrofitted features. Also use the photos to identify the type of cross worn, which, again, was time frame-related rather than type-related. The camouflage schemes and colours proposed in the HB kit are pure fantasy. HTH Radu
  5. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I would rather recommend the drawings published in the book "Vanator" as a starting point for all corrections - they are in scale 1/48 as well. There was no change in the dimensions of the wheel wells throughout the entire life of the aircraft. As Troy mentioned, the drawings on the right are closer to what the wheel wells should be like. The drawings on the left do not even come close to what the Hobby Boss kit wheel wells look like. It must be pointed out that the wheel wells in the Hobby Boss kit are the just as close to each other as the wheel wells in the LTD kit and all detail inside is inaccurate, so the wheel wells are not an "improvement". This distance between the wheel wells was the same for both the I.A.R.80 and the I.A.R.81 that had a bomb rack there. The Hobby Boss kit parts seem to be around half of that, a bomb rack would definitely not fit there. For comparison, look at the distance between wheel wells on the Azur FRROM kit (1/32), the Hobby Boss kit (1/48) and the LTD kit (1/48). Of the three kits, only the Azur FRROM has correct detail inside the wheel wells. HTH Radu
  6. Play the ball not the player. The subject is the kit, not me. If you have anything to say about the kit, please share. None of what I wrote is mandatory. Anyone can take it or leave it. If anyone dislikes what I wrote, they are free to ignore it, do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Radu
  7. What is wrong is that you keep going on forums and facebook looking for rows and trying to make this an issue about me. These problems exists with or without me. I did not cause them, I only listed them for the people who care. You see that as a challenge to your desire to remain uninformed. Fine! If you do not care for what I have to say, stop reading my posts. Others may care, please allow them to exercise that freedom. Radu
  8. Hi John, Yes, that should do nicely. The landing gear issue affects only the drawings up to No.75, the rest should be OK. Please keep an eye on the version you are building. The 4-gun wing included in the kit is only suitable for planes up to No.50. Starting with No.51 the wing had 6 guns and you will need to drill holes for the outboard guns, add the guns and scribe some panels. Please follow the drawings. HTH Radu
  9. Hi John, All well here, good to hear from you again. Hopefully we will meet again in Telford in a few weeks. When I wrote the "Airframe and Systems" book, the common belief was that there were two types of landing gear. I included that in my drawings. However, a while after the book was published I came across a new "cache" of information and I discovered clear and solid evidence that the length of the landing gear never changed throughout the life of the plane. So, I spent another good few weeks correcting all of my drawings to include this landing gear information and the new drawings were published in the book "Vanator" published by MMP. Ali, good to hear from you. The "problems" with this model can be solved and none of the corrective work needed is beyond your capabilities. Sven-ss, you keep saying "I don't care" but you are repeating all of these antagonising posts, word for word, on another forum and on Facebook. That is a lot of "caring" for someone who "does not care". Radu
  10. I did not mean to put anyone off, I was just pointing out the areas that need correction for an accurate model. The landing gear bays are the hardest part to fix, but I did not mean it was an impossible task. ;-) Radu
  11. Photos of the plastic are up on the website. As feared, the kit appears to be based on the drawings published in Modelism drawn by Dan Iloiu in 1989, widely available on the internet. The drawings are quite good and I still consider them among of the best around with some small caveats. The biggest problem in those drawings is with the landing gears and wheel wells, which are too long. The space on the "belly" panel between the two landing gear bays was quite large, but in the drawings (and this kit) they are way too close. However, for those who care for accuracy, all of the points I made in the post above still apply. However, with some corrective work, this can be a made into a model close to accurate. The cockpit parts are totally spurious - the modeller will need to scratch-build it. The cut in the fuselage spine means that the canopy can only be posed closed - for open canopies, the modeller will need to fill in the canopy-shaped gouge. The engine looks nothing like a Gnome Rhone 14K - Vector Models makes a very nice resin engine, so that addressed that issue. The landing gear is too long and in turn, so are the landing gear doors - the landing gear bays will be the hardest thing to fix, this requires a completely new section between the wings with the correct space between the wheel well and the rest of the landing gear bays needs to be scratch-built. The wing is a 4-gun wing, which is suitable only for planes up to No. 50. The modeller will need to scribe the wing access panels and spent cartridge ejection chutes for later versions. The colour schemes depicted are spurious, the colours should be "Dark Earth" & "Dark Green" (similar to RAF) over a light blue similar to Sky Blue (as in the type used by the RAAF, FS25550). The camouflage demarcation patterns depicted are totally wrong. More info in this book http://mmpbooks.biz/shop2/product.php?productid=17698&cat=&page=1
  12. Looking at the graphics shown so far, it appears that they used the drawings published in Modelism in 1989/1990 and widely available on the internet. This is evidenced by the very close landing gear bays - these were based on the previously-held concept that the early versions had a longer landing gear, thus needing a longer landing gear bay in each wing, but latest research findings show that the landing gear length never changed and the distance/panel between the landing gear bays should be a lot wider. The wing shown in these graphics depicts a 4-gun wing, which is suitable for "Nr.42" but "Nr.135" had a 6-gun wing that also involves some extra access panels and spent cartridge openings, which are not shown in the illustration. Either way, the modeller will need to either fill-in some access panels for one version or scribe some panels for the other. Furthermore, the colour call-outs and camouflage patterns also diverge from the latest research findings. So, my only hope is that the person who created the graphics was just a bit lazy and used drawings he/she found on the internet without consulting with the CAD team and that the CAD design was done elsewhere by someone who did their due diligence and used the latest research findings. We shall see more when the plastic shall be revealed. Radu
  13. If you click on the links, a photo should pop up right away. I tried to embed the photos but that causes them to disappear on the server where they are stored (Network 54). It's a bizarre problem, but clicking on the link is an easy solution. Radu
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