Piotr Mikolajski
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Posts posted by Piotr Mikolajski
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4 hours ago, TheyJammedKenny! said:
I thought the LiM-5 had an aerodynamic blister above the engine for a brake chute. Perhaps only a few of them were built this way? I wonder if it'll be an option.
Here is short list of variants:
- Lim-5 = MiG-17F
- Lim-5P = MiG-17PF
- Lim-5R = Lim-5 with AFA-39 camera
- Lim-5M = Lim-5 modified with two metal fairing tanks fitted under the wings, which at the same time served as fuel tanks and fairings for the additional wheels of the main landing gear
- Lim-6 = first variant with brake parachute container
- Lim-6bis = main fighter-bomber variant, initially converted from Lim-6, later also produced as new aircraft, with brake parachute container
- Lim-6R = called also Lim-6bisR because it was Lim-6bis with AFA-39 camera
- Lim-6M = Lim-5P converted to the Lim-6bis standard without brake parachute container
- Lim-6MR = Lim-6M with AFA-39 camera
Long story short - brake parachute container was installed on Lim-6, Lim-6bis and Lim-6R versions only.
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A colour photograph of this aircraft, with the grey emblem, in much better quality, is published in the second volume of Merrick's "Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings 1933-1945", on page 249.
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1 hour ago, Herb said:
How is the existing Tempest Mk.II from Special Hobby? Does it badly need replacement?
Special Hobby released this model in 2005 and if I may make a suggestion, I would wait for Eduard's kit to be scaled down in 1/48.
Tempest in 1/32 is a joint effort between the two companies, Tempest II is jointly released in 1/48 and most likely it will be Special Hobby that will release it in 1/72 and Eduard will repackage the sprues in their boxes - just like they did with the latest Bf 109E.
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1 hour ago, MikeR said:
Nice! I was hoping they were going to do an E-1.
They announced this version a few months ago:
- Bf 109E-1 (SH72454)
- Bf 109E-3 (SH72443, SS018)
- Bf 109E-3a Swiss Air Force
- Bf 109E-4 (SH72439)
- Bf 109E-4 Night Fighter
- Bf 109E-4/B
- Bf 109E-7
- Bf 109E-7/Trop.
- Bf 109T
IIRC foreign users of Bf 109E are planned for separate box. I'm not sure if they are planning less known variants but I wouldn't be surprised with E-5, E-6 or E-8, because why not? Personally I think they may release separate T-1 and T-2 boxes too.
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4 hours ago, Homebee said:
Released - ref. SH72435 - Dassault Mirage F.1 AZ / CZ 'The South African Commie Killers'
Instructions: https://www.specialhobby.eu/out/ftp/media/SH48214(1).pdf
V.P.
Instruction for Mirage is here: https://www.specialhobby.eu/out/ftp/media/SH72435.pdf
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20 minutes ago, RichG said:
but it makes a substantial model, accurate (afaik) and the plastic was very good in its day (c 1990)
The F-111 from Hasegawa was released in 1989. I like history, but I'm not sentimental - this kit may have been great 32 years ago, but it's getting old.
At a price comparable to modern kits, its detail no longer stands up to that comparison. Here are the prices of the F-111 rebox and other modern Fine Molds and GWH models from the same shop:
- 127.00 PLN - F-15E "In action of OEF & OIF" (L7201 GWH)
- 132.00 PLN - F-15I IAF Ra'am (L7202 GWH)
- 137.00 PLN - F-15C Eagle MSIP II "USAF & ANG" (L7205 GWH)
- 141.00 PLN - F-15J Eagle "JASDF Air Combat Meet 2013" (L7204 GWH)
- 172.00 PLN - F-4EJ Fighter (FP 37 Fine Molds)
- 172.00 PLN - F-4EJ Kai Fighter (FP 38 Fine Molds)
- 179.00 PLN - F-111F "Operation Desert Storm" (72038 Hobby 2000)
- 179.00 PLN - F-111D/F Aardvark (72044 Hobby 2000)
- 187.00 PLN - F-14A Tomcat "USS Independence, 1995". (FP 32 Fine Molds)
- 191.00 PLN - F-14A Tomcat (FP 30 Fine Molds)
- 219.00 PLN - F-14D Tomcat (L7203 GWH)
- 219.00 PLN - F-14A Tomcat (L7206 GWH)
- 223.00 PLN - Su-35S "Flanker-E" (L7207 GWH)
Its price with the aforementioned resin add-ons will far exceed that of the Su-35S.
From my point of view and considering that I have about 200 aircraft to build plus at least 100 vehicles, I can wait 5-10 years for Hasegawa's successor. Sooner or later some company will decide to re-release the entire F-111 family. I wouldn't be surprised if it was ClearProp, for example, with their fantastic detailing. I can wait for such a model, I am in no hurry.
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11 minutes ago, Mike Esposito said:
Personally, hasegawa can go to........ their kits are overpriced, cockpit detail is lacking AND, they never include ordinance. Decals are questionable as well.
Hobby 2000 reboxes have decals printed by Cartograf, so as long as research is correct, these decals are strong point.
On the other hand, I was very pleased to see the announcements of this rebox.... and gave up buying it when I saw the price. Here in Poland it is comparable to the price of F-14 from Fine Molds, and if you take into account the price of resin add-ons (wheels, exhaust nozzles, cockpit), it will easily reach the level of novelties from GWH.
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1 hour ago, MiG-Mech said:
But if you wanna earn money, you need to invest money.
The investment must have a chance of return. Paying huge amounts for an absurd licence means a higher cost for the whole project. A higher project price always translates into lower unit sales, so for most companies this type of investment simply does not make economic sense.
32 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:just pay whatever fee
Srsly...
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1 minute ago, MiG-Mech said:
I do not think AwtoWAS wants so much money for my first car's copyrights, do they ?
KamAZ-4310 in 1/35 released by ICM in 2016 has name "Soviet Six-Wheel Army Truck". Guess why.
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5 hours ago, MiG-Mech said:
But I'd like to see more daily life cars instead of 5356754336885337 rally cars, that I can finally build my own cars in scale.
Car corporations demands cash for the rights to use their designs / logos / names, so...
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8 minutes ago, 757flyer said:
Should there be any difference between the actual plastic in the new Sharak boxing (72062) and the original IIIC release (72061)?
• 72061 - 135 parts
• 72062 - 149 parts
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Answer reported in comments that test injections should still be in May. Then they are waiting for the delivery of decals and photo-etched parts and the kit will go on sale.
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3 minutes ago, Fukuryu said:
Mind, I'm happy they do, since some of those subjects are close to my heart, but apparently it defies logic.
The answer is quite simple - different technology than steel moulds. I heard some info about it but I have no full and reliable data. From what I have heard, and here I put the emphasis on *heard*, because this is not the first-hand information, this technology makes it possible to create very high quality moulds at a lower cost, but at the same time the life of these moulds is much shorter. We can call their kits HTSR - Hi-Tech Short-Run.
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First part of photos from build: https://www.specialhobby.net/2021/05/sh32047-westland-whirlwind-mki-132.html
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41 minutes ago, The wooksta V2.0 said:
The newer sheet isn't out yet, I'll ask my LHS owner to stick it on order.
Fortunately there are no BAFO schemes in it, I can let it go.
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2 hours ago, gioca said:
Assuming all the points (...)
As I wrote earlier to someone who tried to guess if one of the secret items in 1/32 is PZL.23 Karaś - such guessing is pointless. I know what test sprues have just arrived, I know what the secret items and production plans are, but I take NDA very seriously, so I won't comment on that.
What I write about in this thread should be treated in general terms, remembering that it concerns the production of kits from steel moulds. Aluminium, galvanised or resin moulds are a separate topic.
This is why I can write that the Polish market does not dictate the choice of subjects, because the Polish market would like models of PZInż.130 or 10TP tanks, or PZL.44 Wicher or PZL.46 Sum aircraft, which IBG will not make, because it is completely unprofitable. The lack of profitability of such ideas is no secret; anyone who can count to ten should be aware of this.
Last but not least - virtually every thriving mainstream company now makes announcements of popular themes at a time when, in fact, the model is ready and production can be started quickly. It is no coincidence that some companies make identical announcements just after someone else has announced a new model. And believe me, in the industry nobody likes such situations or such companies.
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16 hours ago, The wooksta V2.0 said:
The Mosquito sheet they have out, X72332(?), is full of errors.
https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/X72232 I guess? They have another one too: https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/X72334
16 hours ago, The wooksta V2.0 said:and the 305 sqn one has red codes, not black
Mushroom's monography about 305 Squadron has artwork with red codes and authors are not sure if codes were black or red. Indeed letters on the published photos are not that dark as we would expect from black letters so it would be nice to get both options.
5 hours ago, TEXANTOMCAT said:Global events notwithstanding am I alone in thinking the ‘fuzziness ’ or less crisp details on the Sabre and other recent kits might be to do with that soft plastic (Indian or British) they persist in using?
Yes and no. Level of details depends on tooling but different plastic will give slightly different results. But I would put emphasis on *slightly* because such difference is far from "sharp like razor" vs "blob". You'll see difference when you'll keep two sprues next to each other.
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1 minute ago, John Thompson said:
So a family of Yak-9s (and maybe I should be clear that I mean the Yak-9s with the VK-105 engine, not the Yak-9U and Yak-9P with the VK-107) makes sense.
The point is that you are only talking about part of the whole family. Meanwhile, from a design perspective, you have to look at the whole Yak-7/Yak-9 family. Seriously, a responsible company will not want to ruin the subject by releasing only 2-3 versions. And coming back to the topic in a few years and releasing more variants is much more expensive than doing everything at once - you have to pay again for the designer's work, for the analysts' work and so on.
1 minute ago, John Thompson said:Soooo... in the case of the PZL.37, three fuselages is okay, even if two of them differ only by the presence or absence of a window?
These kinds of decisions always depend on the individual case. In the case of the PZL.37 you have the same wings all the time, so making an extra fuselage with a window doesn't raise the cost that much, and allows you to release more boxes, including those with aircraft rebuilt just before the war broke out.
1 minute ago, John Thompson said:Again, forget the Yak-9U and Yak-9P - new kits would be nice, but Amodel has done these, even if the wings are almost 3 mm too far forward.
And here we have the difference between modeller thinking and business thinking. The Yak-9P is from a sales perspective one of the more important versions, because it was used in large numbers after the war by many countries (Albania, Bulgaria, China, Hungary, North Korea, Poland, Soviet Union, USA and Yugoslavia) and this version is the basis for the economic success of the project. This is especially important for types that are not obvious bestsellers, such as the Spitfire or Messerschmitt.
1 minute ago, John Thompson said:Even a better situation than the PZL.37! And the minor difference in wingtip shape can be covered by making the wingtips separate parts, or even just by providing guidance on how to reshape them.
Since I don't remember all the differences between the Yak-9 versions, it's hard for me to say how it can be solved in this case. But speaking in general - it is not always possible to make the wingtips alone, a lot depends on the design, technological issues come into play and so on.
Nowadays models are designed in such a way that modeller could make them straight from the box. Tips on how to change something on your own are rather a domain of short-run kits. Larger manufacturers use such things very rarely indeed, rather when it is a matter of something very simple, to be done with basic tools in a few seconds. If I remember correctly, Eduard in Spitfire 1/48 shows to make an extra line (nothing substantial) for some specific aircraft and that's the only such case in mainstream models from the last years that I remember.
1 minute ago, John Thompson said:So, a Yak-9/VK-105 series really does make sense.
As you can see, the point of releasing such a limited part of the family is not that obvious at all, the cost-effectiveness too. And this is the explanation why the Yak-7/Yak-9 family is only available as a short-run.
1 minute ago, John Thompson said:Hey, is that what those secret future releases are?
Nope.
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2 minutes ago, alt-92 said:
I'm guessing here you mean the D series
I mean Bf 109F/G/K family, including Avia S-99 and S-199.
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4 hours ago, gioca said:
I agreed with you even if following these points is not explicable why so many PZL11 and 23 boxes, or worse PZL37 kits in the IBG Catalogue.
The answer to this question is very simple - IBG designs whole families, not individual versions.
If you invest in a team that analyses documents and photos, the result is a lot of knowledge about the whole design. At that point, you know what you can do with that knowledge, so it pays to invest a little more and design a whole family of aircraft, not just one version.
Modern technology allows us to design a model in many versions in such a way that it will have as many common elements as possible, but at the same time will not require advanced modifications to make each of these versions.
The PZL.37 Łoś is a very good example here. The previous model (from 1982) did not include many details and differences between versions, because it was based on information from the 1970s. To make a version with a single vertical stabilizer, you had to cut the tail and putty the joint.
By designing this model from scratch you could do exactly the same thing. But from the perspective of making life easier for modellers, taking into account the differences between versions and increasing the sales of the model, it made more sense to do three fuselages:
- for the version A (with a single stabiliser)
- for the early version B (without a window in the fuselage)
- for the late version B (with a window in the fuselage)
Similarly, we have different variants of radiators or different variants of rudders. This makes it possible to make several boxes instead of one, so each modeller can choose his own version and paint scheme.
There are also differences of this type in the PZL.23 kit, although they are not so visible. But in the P.11 family the differences between the versions are considerable - they are different wings and different engines. That is why there are so many boxes - they are only seemingly "the same", but the differences between them are really significant.
4 hours ago, gioca said:These items are of course of interest for an internal polish market, outside Poland the interest is really low, one of the lowest.
On the contrary. I cannot disclose specific figures, but these models are selling very well outside Poland. Some buyers want the first Allied fighters or bombers of WWII, but others want interesting camouflage schemes, like Romanian ones. Because the models were designed with different versions in mind, both groups of buyers get what they are looking for.
4 hours ago, gioca said:I can see the pile of unsold PZL in italian shops for instance ... so I can conclude that in your apparently logical theory there s something doen't work a bit.
A pile of models does not at all prove that they do not sell. People often come to my local shop and say that "nothing sells and there is always the same thing on the shelves". Meanwhile, models do sell, and the owner puts another box in place of the sold ones.
Anyway, looking at sales in one shop does not really make sense. Two years ago Hobby 2000 released a reboxed Beaufighter from Hasegawa. It was a great deal because there was a full set of frames inside, so you could probably do any version.
The model sold very quickly, but in one shop it didn't sell at all. The price was the same as in other shops, but in this one the model did not sell. Why? Nobody knows the answer. These models could be bought there until recently, two years after their release, although they were not available anywhere. The demand for them was so great that Hobby 2000 reboxed them once again.
4 hours ago, gioca said:please, concentrate in a family of Curtiss/P40
Special Hobby has been releasing the entire P-40 family since 2017. I don't know if there is room for another manufacturer here, but it certainly doesn't make economic sense, SH kits are very good ones.
4 hours ago, gioca said:or P51 ( starting from a P51- Allison powered... )
Eduard released excellent P-51D/K in 1/48 and they are working on the earlier variants too. Both are planned to be downsized to 1/72, so I myself will wait for the release of their models, even if it is in a few years.
4 hours ago, gioca said:Tempest, Typhoon ... all these temas have the possibility for polish squadron insigna, even under RAF main insignas ...
Tempests and Typhoons were not used by Polish squadrons. And well, IIRC Eduard and Special Hobby announced downsizing their common Tempest, so I'll wait for these kits too.
1 hour ago, gioca said:It's incredible that the type is apparently ignored in any scale despite its history and its performance during WWII.
Yak-7/Yak-9 are not ignored. It's just that each company has exactly the same problems with this design. If the fuselage and wings, the two most expensive parts, were not changing, models of the whole family would have been available in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 long ago.
As the fuselages and wings change, it raises the price of the whole project. At the same time, nobody wants to release just one version, because it doesn't make sense economically - it won't sell as well, so the return on investment will be much longer.
Releasing one version costs X, but the profit from selling it is Y.
Releasing a whole family of versions costs X+20%, but the profit from selling them is Y+200% or more.54 minutes ago, Cyberduck said:I think that IBG will base there manufacturing decisions on what their home market wants. That home market is Poland and Poles aboard.
Nope. Designing and releasing models are not charity. IBG, like any sensible company, is driven by return on investment and subsequent profit. That is why families of aircraft were released whose kits were old and did not include most versions.
The home market demands kits of prototypes of Polish aircraft and tanks from the late 1930s. None of this makes sense, because the cost of designing and producing moulds is the same as for another vehicle or aircraft of similar size, but the difference is in the profits.
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I know personally people from IBG market research department and I know what are these secret items.
53 minutes ago, John Thompson said:I don't expect IBG to call me up to act as their market research department. That could be fatal - their next three releases would be the ones Wulfman suggested!
To be honest, both Lavochkin fighters are in the same category as the I-16. If someone does release them, it will either be a resin kit (Prop&Jet company with its high quality would be good) or a short run - MikroMir released a kit in 1/48, maybe they will downsize it to 1/72.
The Yak-7 / Yak-9 family is a much bigger problem. There are several different fuselages here, the design taking into account most of the versions is complicated and will not be cheap. I myself would like it to be published by a company that can design this type of kit series, that cares about the differences between versions and that can do it at a contemporary quality level worthy of our money. And I would throw that money at them, because the Polish Air Force used several versions and I would like to have them all.
However, I am afraid that it will be done by some company which will mix up the versions and will proclaim to everyone that this is how it should be. Alternatively, it will only do the model right, but only one version and it will not want to do the others. In this way, it will ruin the subject, because then for sure no one else will want to do it.
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Just now, John Thompson said:
A new, more simply engineered kit would probably revive the market just for those reasons alone.
I'm sorry, but no one is going to invest a large sum in the hope that maybe the market will revive interest in the subject.
Companies producing models from metal moulds, especially steel ones (like IBG), are looking at potential sales, because their investment is much higher than for short-run companies producing models from resin or galvanised moulds.
From the point of view of these companies:
- Soviet aircraft sell worse than Allied or German aircraft.
- Interwar/early war planes sell worse than those from the middle or end of the war.
- Planes used in little-known battles sell worse than those that took part in famous battles.
When you consider that Amodel and ICM kits are present in this niche market, it makes no sense to enter it. Perhaps some short-run company will do it, but as I mentioned earlier, there are lower mould production costs there.
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1 hour ago, Fukuryu said:
just in case Eduard decides otherwise.
They confirmed whole family few times, IIRC moulds are to be machined as soon as the Zlin Trainer is completed (soon).
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14 minutes ago, John Thompson said:
Throw in I-16, maybe, too!
Half of the I-16 family (Types 10, 18, 24 and 28) was released by ICM. These kits are still quite good and not so big market for this type is quite saturated.
1/72 - Messerschmitt Bf.109E "Emil" family by Special Hobby - box art+schemes+decals+3D renders - Bf.109E-4 release November 2020 - other boxings in 2021
in The Rumourmonger
Posted
Camouflage schemes for E-1 were modified, devil is corrected.