Thomas V.

While Italeri does have more than its share of idiosyncrasies, doubt they will pass up the opportunity to re-release under " 40th Falklands War Anniversary" FRS.1 and GR.3 as well as Wessex HU.5 and or HAS.3, as they did in 2012 in 1/72 and than as new tooled 1/48 Wessex HU.5 and year later HAS.3, latter being very quickly sold out by Italeri at the time.

-We are not speaking about latest announcement for 2022 or 15% of this September, after Hobbico and latest aquisition prices went up between 70-80% in the last 8 years in hikes of 15-20% yearly, that is all well before Corona and its consequences. Container prices went 10-12 times the amount of money, if it cost 900€ to ship Tamiya than today it costs 9000€, but there are alternative ways like train that cost twice as before, and again well before Corona Far Eastern manufacturers went into overdrive( remember 2009, Dragon and Hasegawa and where are they now), almost all PRC manufacturers did the same, coupled with 40% overhead by some distributors, no surprise that everything aside from online retailers is slowely fading away. Revell aside from tooling production to my knowledge gets everything from inside the EU, and styrene cost, as said before are negligible, not saying that in 7-9 last years the costs did not go up, but nowhere near to validate such hikes, but to be more precise one 1/32nd scale prop fighter cost 19,99 € in 2014, today its 39,99 depending on different VAT rates, at the same time production quality has fallen, and QC with it.

they went 15% up this September, coupled with last year increase Revell will soon find themselves priced out of the market, at the same time both manufacturing process and quality control have been at their worst since early 90's, vote or influence with you wallet, that is the only message new age( extra extra profit ) menagements understand.

So called alleged errors( especially NACA Profile) can be found on almost any kit, just no one bothers checking-one cannot just downsize real aircraft( as some think), its a great kit, and 99% of its omissions can be easily dealt with.

I just hope they start releasing Val, Cmelak, Blanik and Vampire, too many announcements, too few releases.

From my source Its totally new tooled kit, however due to its provenance would wait for first reviews or at least pics before purchasing.

in EU ( with VAT differencies ) WnW kit was supposed to cost between 340-370€, how ( taken all the logistics problems into account )did we reach almost 600€, 80% price hike...and about finishing the model by Border, at Telford when it was still WnW project it was 90% ready, tooling itself was done, tweaking was necessary but stating that Border needed lots of time and effort is.... At the time and today one can get 2x Airfix Typhoons for app.240-260€, or for app.340-360€ two Tamiya Mosquitos, asking around 550-600€ for Lancaster sized model is beyond ludicrous.

KC-130H and AC-130H are rumours before AC-130A, and C-130B

Again me being grumpy and non sociable, there are at least few people on this forum that scan all the possible news outlets from farflung websites, forums, blogs, social media for any news and updates, and in most cases it takes them less than an hour to bring that news to this forum. Lately there is almost once a day " any news?" bringing alive old topics, in my highly subjective view this equals to trolling-lite...if there is any news on a certain subject, it will be on Rumormonger in tens of minutes, if not hours, certainly less than half a day, so for anyone reading this rant, if you dont have any news of your own to bring to the topic, please don't resurrect dormant topics, thank you in advance-rant over. P.S. Facebook Clear Prop page is the best source for news updates regarding the brand.

If its Pe-2 quality with all the recessed and positive surface detail than outstanding, if its toylike like Su-57 and Mi-24 than it will be another missed opportunity for both Zvezda and potential buyers hoping to get ultimate Frogfoot for fair price.

Saw your reply late, I have first B boxing, and from the outset sonething looked wrong nose wise, compared to Promodeler kit its almost 6 mm short, now some did mention that Promodeler kit has too long gun nose, compared to what sources I have ( Squadron Signal in Action as well as few online souces without confirmed provenance) all mentioned above show discrepancy of 4-5mm, when comparing real aircraft pics to ICM kit- in my view it screams out.

Did ICM include another nose section?... or is the same gun nose which is in all "B" boxings more than a bit short.

Outstanding news, I've grown old waiting for Tamiya early Merlin lineup, and if its close to WNW overall quality we're in for a treat. Still don't understand how Tamiya was not able in more than a decade to fully exploit Mk.IX.c tooling, since (as already mentioned ) tooling was designed to enable Mk.I/V kits down the line.

V.Šulc stated several times on https://www.modelforum.cz/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=95280&start=32730 that Seafires Mk.I.b, Mk.II.c, Mk.III were in longterm development as well as PR.IV. For those not familiar with webpage link posted above, Mr.Šulc actively interacts answering lots of questions, mostly...will you do..xyxy....

I have my doubts about 32nd scale jets, at least here in EU, I am old enough to remember when Tamiya re-issued their Tomcat, when Eagles and Phantoms came, none of them were great sellers, they were too expensive, and that was one of reasons Tamiya issued four boxings in four years, becacuse initial C/D was shelf sitter, all that in a time when prices were much lower than today. Same goes for hordes of Trumpeter 32nd kits that lingered and are now being dumped but still no one purchases them, neither distributors neither end buyers. Only jets in 32nd scale that sold excellent were Academy's F-16 and F-18, because they were fairly priced, comparison wise in today's world with Tamiya F-4B in 48th being priced well above my line of good taste( big euphemism ) i dread the price sticker on newly tooled 32nd.Phantom.

Tooling produced in S.Korea and Taiwan, with injection processes in situ, did not hear PRC provenance. Meng outsources tooling production.

Oldtimers retired, new blood came, with it new ideas, but why their non limited catalogue is almost without any change for a decade, one of life mysteries, same for selling long oop but still top plastic for few $/€ to third parties instead of re-issuing those toolings themselves...mindblowing compared what and where they were decade ago.

That unfortunately is very true.

Cmelak truely does have charisma, and the kit is simply outstanding, as far as I understood the kit tooling was outsourced to another Czech manufacturer, and they did superb job, hope more kits will come out of their cooperation, would not mind new Fieseler Storch ( and K-65) family from Eduard.

SH Mirages III/V went back to the drawing board after Modelsvit releases, quality found on Mirage F.1 deemed not satisfactory.

If viewing in pure mathematical terms-right you are, but I am comparing values to set figures of yesteryear. But to better illustrate with semi public info- without breaching any professional or friendly confidence with other examples , Airfix Typhoon in 1/24 scale from start to finish cost Hornby app.30.000+ £ ( thirty, not three hundred ), and excellent sales saved the company for few months in winter 2014/5, Now one has to take into account that Airfix outsources tooling production( not development, but production), and has already well oiled processes-that does shed costs. So 1/24 Typhoon with all of detail intricacies, number of parts, etc....30K £ ( highest I heard all inclusive app.35K £). , that without having tooling production in house....compare that to sums cited by few, supra proliferation of new kits last years and dwindling number of production runs...

As Eduard mentioned- no tools were damaged during the fire, but it will take time for them to re-stock. Due to informal/formal war between Eduard and Special Hobby on one side and AZ/KP on the other, both of the former are keeping smaller scale plans very close to their chest, there will be plenty more 72 kits, but will remain secret until very close to their release date.

At least in my text there is no mention of so called absolute accuracy, mentioned does not exist in real life, nothing is 100%. Affordability and accuracy are not contradictory terms ( when speaking about shapes and sizes ), whether certain machine drills, mills a block of future tooling right or wrong ( accurate or inaccurate ) costs the same. So..those obsessed with accuracy are missing the boat catering for vast majority ( that you feel comfortable speaking for ), how exactly would that be? ...missing the boat by producing more accurate product? I will stick with airplane modelling, where a panel, rivet pattern, windscreen frame can make difference between subtypes, that is the level of accuracy one must strive to achieve, below that better not be in this business, and that is not absolute accuracy (that does not exist) but accuracy. There are plenty of people who view this hobby far too seriously ( unfortunately that can also be a euphemism ) , but regarding condescending and derogatory term rivet counter for a normal person that strives for more accurate product ( as accuracy is paramount in scale modelling, that we hopefully can agree on ) is beyond comprehension, given that rivet counting designers are behind of what best of 2021 has to offer- literally. As for Kinetic- agreed, they truly know to listen unlike some others, but are also prone to host of inaccuracies that are well. well below that 95%, so being amused by modellers rightfully being sceptical about certain details that make certain subtype, is in my view not amusing. It is ( again in my view ) among other similar posts by the few-poorly masked agenda usually mystifying model kit production processes for purpose of either pushing sub standard products ( eg.Zvezda Mi-24 recently ), certain brands or validating sharp rise of kit prices ( mostly by new brands ), again both is legal and legitimate, but so is replying to such I would say not so benign and hobbyesque spirit and action.

What does affordability have to do with accuracy? There is a long list of Kinetic doing it wrong, thankfully their F-104 is truely Gold standard, unlike some other of their kits that claim/ wear that title, given complexity of F-104 everyone sceptical has every right to be sceptical about, not easy to capture all the differencies.

Right type of distributors are as rare as water in a desert, numerous known Far Eastern brands vanished from shops throughout EU due to overhead in some cases reaching 60% , a certain Western European official distributor to app.5 EU countries of a highly known Japanese brand, adds 50% before taxation.