bjohns5

Thank you very much. That's more than I expected to learn. Is there a record anywhere of the serials of the Rocs that were issued to 806 NAS? Even if I don't know the specific serial of Day's a/c I'll be happy as long I use a serial it could have been.

The one and only confirmed aerial victory reported for the Blackburn Roc occurred on 28 May 1940 when a Roc from 806 Naval Air Squadron piloted by Midshipman A. G. Day, along with two Skuas, intercepted five Junkers Ju 88s attacking a convoy off Ostend in Belgium. The Roc flew underneath the Ju 88s and as the Skuas attacked from above, Day's gunner fired his Brownings into one Ju 88’s belly. It was reported missing later and confirmed as a kill. Has anyone ever determined the paint scheme and markings Day's aircraft carried on that mission?

I don't find many photos of Tiger Moths from an angle that shows the wingtip shape well, but the one's I did find to my eye show a tip shape much closer to the de Havilland drawing than to Airfix's interpretation.

LF Models makes 1/48 airbrush stencils for painting the "poached eggs," "snakes", and "smoke rings" Italian WWII camo.

As Troy said above, it's best not to put total faith into published plans as the printing process introduces variance into the output that can skew the results. Looking at various official 1930s/1940s Tiger Moth publications from the RAF, RAAF and RCAF, the wingspan of the aircraft is consistently listed as 29 feet, four inches. Reducing that to 1/48 scale gives us a scale dimension of 7.33 inches or approximately 7 and 11/32 inches. Pulling an Airfix kit out of my cupboard and measuring the wingspan of both wings yields an actual measurement of about 7 and 9/32. Curious about why that difference might be I looked through some of the Tiger Moth documentation I've collected and found in the Manual of Instructions for Operation, Maintenance and Rigging issued by de Havilland Aircraft Ltd. Australia a factory drawing which illustrates lubrication points. If you compare the shape of the wingtip in the drawing with that of the kit, it appears to me that Airfix made the tip too squarish where the drawing shows an egg-shaped curve widening out considerably at the aileron hinge point. I think that difference accounts for 1/32 of difference on each side which could make up the missing span width. It may well be that Airfix based their kit on restored/preserved examples that had been modified over the years for whatever reason with slightly different shaped wingtips. I in no way claim to be an expert on the Tiger Moth, I just have made a habit for 20 years or so of collecting useful bits and documents as I come across them.

Has Eduard said anything about if they plan to follow on with kits of the early Allison engined versions?

Very nice. I have the Lukgraph 1/48 resin Wapiti in my cupboard that I hope to get started on soon.

Not always. especially if it's a new release by Trumpeter. Newer is not always better.

Yet every new release of every 1% better P-51, Hurricane, Spitfire, 109 and Zero seems to sell like half-price hotcakes.

Exactly. And hobby store shelves, model shows, eBay, and FB trade groups will now be full of potentially flawed Trumpeter offerings. What new manufacturer will want to release a new kit of that subject, especially a non-mainstream subject like a Fulmar or a Battle, knowing that they have to compete against all that Trumpeter inventory that's out there, and the new inventory they can produce at will. Especially since it generally costs more to create a new, accurate and well detailed kit so they will be at a price disadvantage for those buyers who as you say "don't care about accuracy" and would buy whichever kit looks like the subject but costs less. Ask yourself why, with all the flaws Classic Airframes kits exhibited, it took 20 years before other manufacturers began to release those same subjects.

Armory Model Group has released a couple variants of the Fairey Flycatcher

I hope Airfix will follow up with, or an aftermarket company will release a conversion, to make this kit into a Bulldog Mk.IVa to model the ones used by Finland which I believe were the only Bulldogs to fire their guns in anger.

I understand those people do exist. And I'm sure we will soon see fully assembled but unpainted "blanks" for them so they can indulge in their entirely different hobby of "painting miniature airplanes" without being burdened by the need to actually construct one first.

No doubt. But not to me. I already have a Wingsy Bf-109E-4 and have 300 more interesting individual subjects in my stash to get through before I would feel inclined to want to build a second 109E. If a kit maker wants my dollars for a subject I already have a kit of stashed, they'll have to make the new kit a substantial enough improvement over the one I already have to justify my effort to buy the new one and sell the old.

Looking at what has been shown so far in my opinion Dragon has spent considerable time and energy solving a problem that isn't really a problem with well-designed kits. I'll wait and see whether they have actually improved on the Wingsy kits, or just threw something out that they knew would sell in the Asian market.