nick

This is looking really good now!

Only just found this, great aircraft I’ve never seen before and top class scratch building, what a great project. I just love bulldog-esque sticky-out, faired in cylinders, they’re my favourite.

If you’ve got one of these, you need to like decals. You’ll be needing a LOT of micro Sol/Set. bloody screws are back with a vengance I still really like this. It’s just solid, heavy and does capture the spirit of the car if you don’t look too closely.

Fun with decals today. There’s a lot of them. The fit, cut out precision and variation of the Carbon fibre is pretty amazing IMHO.

No ABS in this. The wishbones are some kind of white metal alloy. They are quite stiff and harder than Britannia metal for example.

Indistinguishable from the Meng the Merciless version. What’s the problem? on the plus side if the kit was perfect it wouldn’t leave anything for me to do 😎👍

As I said earlier, this is build is totally out of the box. I’m compiling a to-do list for my second one where I will tackle any issues I find with this one as well as any potential enhancements. So basically I want a ‘vanilla’ before version, this one, then eventually an ‘unobtainium’ after version with all the upgrades and enhancements I’m currently planning.

Really enjoying this. First fumble - silly screws in a very obvious place - why? the lower arms have pins behind cast in brackets that slot in the gearbox nicely - great. You can't really see them though, so the ones you can see, right on top of the gearbox they just put stonking great crosshead screws in. Go figure. I blame Pocher for this, I think there's a notion that high-cost, large scale car kits MUST be screwed together at some level even if it is for the sake of it. Its not that easy to fix either the way they gone about it. Anyway. apart from that, ace. I've got my eye on a few bits for the next one, but the base kit is brilliant.

Revell chrome. Wow

I’ve been nailing lumps of plastic together for about half a century now, off an on, and this thing is possibly the nicest kit I’ve come across. I really enjoyed Airfix’s new big spit too. We truly are living in a golden age of modelling. Nick

Yes I might end up doing that. It’s always going to be a challenge to free it from the supports without damaging it.

In other news, this just came off first time This is the joy of my new Saturn 3 Ultra, I would have spend about 3 weeks of misery scraping wreckage off the Saturn 2 at this stage. It's just curing and I will attempt to separate it from the supports which will be interesting. Stand by! Nick

And we're off. I'm taking this SO seriously, I even cleared the decks with an 'uncommanded' (by wife) Workshop tidy. I know. Anyway, about the first part you encounter is a beautifully slide moulded cylinder head assembly. OK brand new tools I know, but there's almost no cleanup required. Meng insist on using pointless screws for assembly, 55 of em, as it seems to be mandatory for 1/12th F1 cars for some reason, but apart from that, it really is a thing of beauty, fit is amazing, if a bit snug. You need to take a leap of faith that Tamiya superthin cement will give you last few tho you need to close the joint perfectly - and it does. This is just pushed together currently as I haven't decided how to paint it yet. It's all black, but I'm seeing some subtle variation in pictures. I never thought I'd say this but maybe John Prescott was right, I would have scurried off and started doing CAD by now if I only had one kit. Instead, I'm cracking on with the build and starting a list of potential mods for the next one. As Lvp suggested, which made me check, there is a crazy step on the body to demarcate the paint line, shouldn't be too difficult to remove, but really? otherwise, deeply impressed so far. I've had a proper look at the decals now, there's two sheets of CF, one of reflective aluminium material and a small sheet with highly reflective mirrors and a lot of the main decals are also metallic. Very nice indeed.

That’s why I got 2

Can't put it off any longer - this is going to be interesting.

OK, I've tweaked the radiator core to get clearance with the water pump. However, I suspect my water pump is slightly overscale and/or not quite the right shape, so I need to take another look at it. Core 'painted' white here so you can see what's going on. I've also got the angle of the exhaust manifold wrong now the engine/radiator/bulkhead are finally in the correct position with clearances. The rest should be a lot more straightforward now I've finally put this to bed, it's been a real nightmare to do.

I have had a better look now, here's some photos. There's around 30 sprues in this kit BTW, they go well past Z into double letters Likes:- suspension castings look really nice seems to be a full set of carbon fibre decals very crisp looking mouldings great detail for an injection moulded kit - multi part clutch for example PE Grilles and seat belt clasps Trestles for displaying the shell off the car Dislike- Silly Meng/AK paint colours only referenced which don't appear to have an equivalence chart anywhere And that's all I can find to moan about up to now, which is quite something in itself.

To be honest, I've ordered two. I'm going to make the first one out of the box, and use the second one for developing any POTENTIAL enhancements (if required) First impressions are it's a very, very good kit to start with in fairness. I've been buying up the old Tamiya 1/12th F1 re-releases and this thing shows its 20 or so years lead on them a fair bit. I'm not much of an 'unboxing' (or boxing, actually come to think of it) fan, but I may take some pictures if I get chance. Meng Seem to like smallish deep boxes and this one is absolutely full of stuff.

My best mate the postie just rocked up with this puppy. Only had a cursory rummage around in the box, but wow. We like. This thing looks a bit special. I'll have a proper look later but first impressions are 10/10. I think it's found it's way to the top of the build stack anyway. Nick

Anyone else fumbling with hideously painful fusion models, I just stumbled upon 'Dissolve Features' and it made a huge difference to complex models with a lot of history.

Got a few clearance issues still, but it's not a million miles off now finally!

Let's have a look, share it again then.

I'm glad you've had success with yours - I haven't with mine. I've had about 6 Elegoo resin printers now and this one has driven me to distraction. I have tried everything including heaters/temp control and I just get random failures about half the time regardless of what I do. So much so, I have finally given up and bought a Saturn 3 Ultra which has been flawless so far. It's also 12K which puts it ABOUT the same resolution as a small 4K machine in real terms which is great - it's a square law remember!. I have concluded I just got a bad machine with my Saturn 2 as nobody else seems to be having the same problems, although I still can't tell you why or exactly what's failing, but something is. I've also concluded (rightly or wrongly) that big printers aren't just like bigger little printers. The physics kicks in a lot more IMHO - FEP stretching, resin starvation etc, etc what works on a small printer doesn't necessarily work on a bigger one. For example if I can print 10, small detailed things on a Mars, I can't necessarily print 20 of the same things with the same settings on a Saturn/Jupiter. Designs that print happily time after time on a Mars, sometimes fail on a Saturn or Jupiter. I incorrectly assumed that if a design comes off every time on a small printer, it will do the same on a larger one. It doesn't. OK I'm pushing the limits of thin walls, high detail, small contact areas etc, etc. It's been a 'journey'

as you say. ook. I have a signed copy of Witches abroad somewhere.