Giorgio N

Forgot one other very good kit: the Tamiya F4U. A great kit, well detailed and easy to build and in overall gloss sea blue it's also easy enough to paint

Easy to build and with a simple scheme? Academy's P-51B in Olive Drab over Neutral Grey. Not necessarily the most detailed or accurate kit around and the Arma Hobby kit is the best for this aircraft but overall Academy's is a good compromise, a modern tool very easy to build. The OD over NG scheme is also very simple to apply. Mind, if you've been building 1/35 AFVs I believe you would have no problem with any mainstream 1/72 kit anyway...

And yes, I forgot to mention that the ailerons on the VI are shorter in span than those in the Mk.IX.... one more reason for which I'd probably just search for a suitable Mk.IX kit rather than modifying a Mk.VII

Mind, you can still modify a C wing to an E wing. All you need are a set of gun barrels and the relevant bulges on the wing. In the later steel moulds AZ/KP kits there are parts for both, maybe someone who has built an early IX can spare the later bulges and gun fairings to you while if you built an Eduard Mk. IX before you can do what I did here on the Hasegawa kit: Alternatively the gun barrel fairings can be bought in brass from Master One modification the VII wing would need is to fill the panel lines for the leading edge tanks, absent from the Mk.IX. Same with a Mk.XIV wing, as this variant also had these tanks There are other differences, like the position of the rear fuselage light, but as this is probably not even represented in the AZ kit it's easy to modify it. The IX of course did not have the retractable tailwheel of the VII but judging from the sprue shots it's possible to reproduce a fixed tailwheel from the AZ Mk.VII kit

Well a proper Mk.VII would have not only a different canopy but the fuselage canopy area would be different. However.... If the kit you have available locally is this one: https://www.super-hobby.it/products/Spitfire-Mk.VII-2447180.html Then the fuselage is the same as all other AZ kits, so would work fine for a Mk.IX. The rear part of the canopy on the VII is deeper and AZ correctly shows in the instructions that the corresponding area of the fuselage needs removing. By leaving the fuselage as is you have a Mk,IX fuselage. I see that the box includes the Aerovee intake that was used on MK356 (that I believe is the aircraft you want to build), so this would be ok. Where I'm not sure the kit works is in the wings and armament... I can't see in the sprue shots the guns for the E wing configuration and pictures seem to show that MK356 has the E wing. Eduard did issue a specific Spitfire IXe box and that would work perfectly. The current KP kit also allows this configuration (but is IMHO a much worse kit). I'd check properly the armament configuration of MK356 during the time painted in silver to see if you can easily build this from the Mk.VII kit or not.

i If you want a Mk.IX, then I'd go Eduard and nothing else. Just check what subvariant the aircraft you want to build is as Eduard Spitfire kits have different wings depending on this (IXc early, IXc late, IXe). With the AZ kit you have all parts in the same box, although these are then not as accurate as the ones in the Eduard kits.. if however the one you can find locally is a Mk.VII then at least in theory it should be quite a different variant, with a different canopy and other specific details. Not sure what AZ put in the box though...

Variation in sizes do not depend on the printer accuracy though, the printer just prints whatever the companies tell them to print. Some companies do their research properly, others really don't. If I'm a model company and I make an order to a printer for roundels of exactly 10.7 mm diameter, I'll get a 10.7 mm diameter, not a 11.4 or 10.1. Different story if the same model company ask directly for a 10.1 when it should be 10.7. Just look at the different accuracy of Airfix sheets compared to Italeri, even when both are printed by the same company,.... Another aspect we should keep in mind that any shape or size error on the kit will affect the decal, if my fuselage is too short a correctly sized decal will look wrong while a smaller one will look better even if inaccurate... Sorry if I may sound dismissive of the tolerance thing but I've been designing my decals for long enough to have some rough idea of what can and can not be achieved... any time I had someone else print stuff for me, whenever the decal didn't look right on the model it was my "mistake" and not the printer. Design things properly and a reliable printer will do it right.

If we consider the matter of accuracy a lot of apparently very popular subjects would easily enter the list... If I had to ask for something, I'd ask for a ACCURATE 1/72 Spitfire Mk.I.... of course in any thread dealing with kits never previously issued everyone would think I'm crazy if I pled for someone to make a 1/72 Spitfire Mk.I... and yet, IMHO there is no really accurate Spitfire Mk.I on the market today !

The problem here is that it does not matter what a modelling company does, I may decide to use a certain set of parts because they look closen enough but they are not in real life. Model companies may decide to make a totally new mould for a Spitfire 24 when fuselage sections are mostly the same between this and other variants while the same company may re-use a Mirage fuselage as it is for a Kfir even when fuselage sections are different... model companies have several times based kits on existing ones without considering the differences on the real aircraft, with the result of issuind inaccurate kits

It's hard to tell in a picture because of the various alignment issues and the different shapes of the serial compared to the roundel does not help but a 2" difference on a 16" roundel is a difference of over 10% and this on a model is very visible ! Regarding decal printing tolerances, a variation over 10% is something that would lead any serious company to return all sheets to the printer accompanied by a letter from a lawyer... printers can achieve way stricter tolerances, even without using particularly advanced equipment.

So with the MG area painted red and a gloss coat on the lower surfaces it was time to start adding some decal. As said before, these come from the Hobbyboss kit and the old Airfix Mk.I. Or at least this was the plan, plan that will need a small change. Wing oundels came from Hobbyboss. IMHO they are a bit small but I'll live with it. The red is also a bit too bright but I also remember having read about the use of the prewar red on a number of Hurricanes so I'll not bother. They settled down very well on the rivets with the help of Gunze's decal liquid. 3 worked very well, one of the upper ones however for some reason broke and I'll now have to touch-up the blue areas. Could have been worse... Codes and fuselage roundel are from the Airfix kit. I would have used the HB roundels but for some reason they feature very unusual proportions, maybe that specific aircraft has these roundels or maybe they made a mistake. The Airfix roundels are good and the red is appropriately darker... meaning that there will be some difference between these and the wing markings. Again, I'll live with it. Codes and personal insignia are of course from Airfix as the HB decals are for a Mk.IIc. The grey codes were not printed very well for some reason but on the model they don't look too bad. The Airfix decals also settled down very well, the film is not as clear as HB's but it's still very acceptable. Work is not completed but let's see some pictures... that for some reason are very bad, even if I used the same camera with the same light conditions of the past days

Thanks Steve ! 55 years ago this would have been a recent kit, probably state of the art... guess at that age you didn't care much about these things in the same way as I didn't care much about it when I entered the hobby a few years later Thanks Jean ! Actually I did not rescribe anything, the kit features recessed panel lines together with rivets. An unusual combination that however I've seen on other Revell kits of the era. Not sure if AK actually meant to reproduce Du Pont paints. To me the whole set looks as a badly researched one, some paints are acceptable but others are too far off to have been based on some proper research. Have to say that for some reason I insisted with AK and got the modern USN set, this looks much better accuracywise. I also have the Luftwaffe set and the one made by AK for meng with USAAF colours. These two were, like the RAF one, sets that came as part of kit lots I bought from Ebay so even if they are not accurate at least I've not spent much money on them. I'll try the Luftwaffe set on a Bf.109E I'm building in parallel with the Hurricane but since I know little on proper Luftwaffe colour I may not be able to assess these properly. I'll give a try to the USAAF set too... Regarding the kit, well it's what it is, a proper Hurricane enthusiast would hate the shapes but has its value from a historical perspective so it makes sense to build one. I mean, I'm a big Tomcat enthusiast and I have a Monogram 1/72 F-14, that I guess is kind of similar...

Glow2B as part of Trumpeter ? Aren't they a German distribution company ? And also Heller's owners ?

In any case if you really want one this is a kit that should be easy enough to find as it's been in production for a really long time. Unfortunately today delivery costs are much higher than they used to be, there's a pretty cheap one on Ebay in Italy (€6, should be around £5), a later box with much better decals than the ones my kit had. Even delivery within Italy is higher than the cost of the kit, delivery to the UK would probably be 3 times the cost of the kit...

They are and they aren't.... the 339 is really a development of the 326 with a modified front fuselage and certain features of the 326K but retaining the same wings. The old Supermodel kits exploited this by having a common sprue for the wings and separate sprues for the 326, 326K, 339 and 339K carrying the fuselage, equilibrator and other parts KP could easily do something similar, Afterall they are proposing a family of S.211/M345 even if there are differences between these two aircraft and they could be considered different types

The darker colour was a dark olive drab, then was a medium grey green and of course the base was a yellow sand According to Tom Cooper's Arab MiGs series of books, the "Nile Valley" camouflage used colours based on the British BS.381c standard, in particular the olive drab was 298, the grey-green was 283 and the sand was 388. Wether these were the exact colours or not, the sure are in the right ballpark compared to pictures of newly painted aircraft... what effect the North African sun had over time on the finish is a different story

The cockpit in the Sword Mk.XIV follows a style quite common with short run Czech Spitfire kits, like the previous AZ ones. It's not a solution that leads to ease of assembly, the instrument panel and the bulkhead behind the seat often need to checked and trimmed if necessary to properly fit. Worse of all, once all the parts are glued together, the whole assembly is very fragile and it's not easy to fit the block in the fuselage without having one or more parts falling out of alignment. There's little that can be done, just check, trim to fit if needed and use plenty of care

Thanks ! Well, the holiday was very enjoyable but I don't know if I can say the same of this kit... Thanks ! Goes to show that some decent painting can hide a lot. At some point I considered an "old school" brish finish but then I wondered how an old kit would have looked like painted and weathered as I do on the more modern ones I generally build... I have a feeling that if I had sanded the rivets I could have made pass this for a much better model than it actually is... Thanks ! Not sure he'd have appreciated but you never know... thinking about it, one of my favourite songs ever is indeed titled Hurricane, the Bob Dylan song about boxer Rubin Carter Thanks ! I don't know however if I really want to be guilty of convincing you to buy this kit.. If you mean the '70s Airfix Spitfire Mk.I or V then this Hurricane is way worse in any respect. The Airfix kits show that they are from a different era, with much more refined detail. Well, at least having the two side by side will show how much plastic model kits improved over those 10-15 years.

You would have to keep the edges of the mask slightly lifted for a feathered effect, that with an adhesive mask is not that easy since it will tend to stick down. It is possible but need care

Similar to what others do here, with the difference that I'm now using more and more often a masking material named Oracal 810. This is clear and is sold in sheets or rolls and being vinyl or similar can be somewhat "stretched" to fit even quite difficult curves. Cost is reasonable, coming in my part of the world and around € 1 per an A4 sheet. Generally I apply this onto the model directly, then draw the pattern, remove the material from the model and put it back on its backing sheet. At that point I can cut and reapply the various masks on the model. Makes drawing even complex patterns on small 1/72 parts relatively easy. Here's the material on a 1/72 Hurricane Is this better than paper ? Well, has some advantages. As said before it can be stretched a bit more to follow the shapes of the model. Being clear gives perfect visibility of the model panel lines and other features, making drawing the pattern easier. Sticks well but does not remove paint since it's specifically made for masking. I was surprised by how this material managed to stick well and cause no seepage even on a rivet covered surface like that on the Revell Hurricane... It can actually be reused a couple of times, that always helps. At the same time there are some drawbacks, for example not all pens can write on it (I use a Gundam marker). It is slightly thicker than the best kabuki paper but really not that much and with a minimum of care it's easy to avoid ridges. I still use kabuki paper but generally only with my Silhouette Portrait cutter, that is the other tool I use to make masks. I rarely use this for a single models but for subjects of which I have a number (Eduard's Spitfire IXs for example) I've prepared a number of files with the general camouflage pattern. If needed I can modify the pattern for the specific aircraft I want to reproduce, then I put a sheet of paper or Oracal in the cutter and I end up with a new set of masks. To make the files I use a combination of drawings from instructions sheets and patterns drawn on Oracal directly on the model. Sounds time consuming but really it does not take that long, it's probably comparable to the time it takes me to draw and cut a single pattern by hand.

Yes, I'm glad if AZ/KP keep them coming, however I'd like them to keep 'em coming with a more consistent quality... all good to make these subjects in short-run form, makes sense commercially. However in 2022 we've seen others doing short run kits where panel lines are consistent and the plastic does not feature scars everywhere, kits where wheels are round and decently detailed and not blobs of plastic. Why can't they do the same ? Their recent SF.260 was very disappointing, being in terms of mould quality even worse than much older kits from the same company, with all the elements mentioned above and a few more. I have resin kits that are easier to clean than this Sf.260 ! The company keeps proposing very interesting subjects and at pretty good prices however I'd really like to see some improvement, each time I try and each time I get disappointed. Hopefully this will be the right time ? (Talking about short run kits of course, the ones from metal moulds are a different story)

Good point ! The work of the Savage crews must have been very far from dull. I wonder what must have been like to fly an aircraft that big from a carrier in those days... What I meant was that the Savage career was quite short and the type was soon eclipsed by the Skywarrior, a true workhorse that lasted in service for various missions for a few decades while the Savage. like other early postwar USN types was quickly forgotten.

Gunships and other assets are niche platforms that the USAF can afford to operate thanks to the massive US defence budget. With that kind of money it's possible to develop, train and field units that end up being called into action only in very specific missions, without that budget it's not possible. No other western air force can imagine to spare a dozen Hercules of similar aircraft, figure that would be a not so small chunk of for example the whole RAF tactical transport force. Not forgetting that while gunships may seem simple aircraft they are actually quite expensive because of their sensor suite. All other air forces have to support their troops through other means. SOCOM is also a command with quite large funding (and in the past this kind of funding has sparked controversy), no surprise that they can get a lot of "toys" they want. In the end we should never forget that the US defence budget is larger than that of the 10 following countries put together, including countries like China and Russia. The UK spends less than 10% of the US budget, no surprise they can't afford the same kind of things

That was in the Po river a couple days ago. More wartime stuff had previously surfaced, including a German pontoon bridge that had been sunk by the allies, a few transport boats and even a German half-track that had sunk. Because of the excessive temperatures in the mountains manyWW1 objects have surfaced and a number of bodies have also been retrieved. All things that had disappeared into the ice and snow a century ago.

It is a serious problem here in Italy, drinking water is not a problem (apart from areas like the smaller isles and certain areas in the South where it's always been a problem) but the agriculture is being serious impacted. Farmers are reaping in advance as many fruits and vegetables are literally destroyed by the heat. Large rivers like the Po have turned into small streams surrodunded by boggy ground. The problem is not only that it's been raining very little, a more serious matter is that glaciers are literally disappearing, meaning that rivers are not guaranteed a constant stream of water regardless of the rain. Temperatures are higher than usual everywhere but atop the mountains this is much more noticeable, with areas where these are over 10°C higher than the average. The planet is gettig warmer and the climate is changing, we had been forewarned but we didn't really listen hard enough....