Flipping Airfix Swift!

[Andy Robbins]

I'm sure I read that the Frog Ventura was the inspiration for Academy's. It was rumoured at the time, but you know the power of what 'they' say.....

[Graham Boak]

The Academy Ventura was described as a straight copy, but they published a photo of the runners side-by-side to show that wasn't true. As for "inspiration", well, that could mean anything, and might even be right.

If I'd been 14 when the Matchbox kits came out, I'm sure I would have loved them too, but I was twice that so never approached them with quite the same innocence. I still bought rather a lot. I even bought a second Halifax, which if anything proves only the strength of hope over experience. I only wish they'd paid the same attention to that as to their Heyford - or even Lancaster.

[AnonymousAA72]

I did have a few problems with my a Swift, these were all in the cockpit section and IP. I daresay its engineered to fit, but the parts are so minuscule, it's a challenge to be able to see where..and how, especially with my eyesight!! If these are installed incorrectly then that will indeed cause issues in getting the halves to close.....

[Andy Robbins]

For me it was the undercarriage bay. It kept pushing up into the nose and stopping it from closing. The cockpit sides refused to sit in place with the u/c bay attached because the whole thing was pushing backwards. The curved location on the rear bulkhead didn't match the back of the fuselage, so it wouldn't seat properly. The problem was made worse by the fact that there wasn't anything I could easily trim. Like I said before, the Rareplanes kit fitted better than my example. Had I closed the fuselage properly, the wing would have gone in beautifully, as would the tailplanes and tailpipe. 80% of the kit was perfect, but the other 20 was what spoilt the whole thing.

If this sort of problem arises again, I'm going to send it to Margate and say 'send it back built, please'. I wish to goodness I'd done it with that awful Navy Lynx.

[The wooksta V2.0]

IIRC, I trimmed about a mm or so from the front of the cockpit tub front to get it to fit okay. Didn't have a pick of bother bar that. However, I'm getting very tired of having to trim and sand every flipping piece of the latest Airfix kits, largely down to that plastic they're using. I didn't have it on the Defint though but it did make assembling the Beau's engines very tricky.

[dancho]

New Airfix kits are bears to build. I've complained about the one's I've built. I do think some reviewers get carried away with the "New Airfix." Patriotism plus nostalgia is a powerful combination.

EDIT: I found my diary of the building the new 1/72 Typhoon--this is what I wrote Sep. 15, 2013.

"Anyway, in truth this is one of the most difficult to assemble kits I've seen in a long time. I mean the fidgety way it's engineered is insanity making. I just thank whatever Gods that made me that it all fitted together, sort of. Lots of clamping."

Edited August 26, 2015 by dancho

[spaddad]

I think the bottom line here is that Airfix have a problem and I can't see how this can be resolved until production is brought home or at the very least relocated to a 1st world country. I love Airfix, they were a major part of my childhood and undoubtedly a major factor in my subsequent lifelong love of and involvement in this brilliant hobby and I am so glad they are back at, or near the top of their game, but I am not, nor ever will be an apologist for them. If these were cars or parachutes or bacon sandwiches with the apparent failure rates we are talking about here there would be hell on. I could be wrong about the India thing (I was wrong about something once, wife no. 2 never let me forget it right up to the day we got divorced), I hope I am and that Airfix go from strength to strength but whatever the reason for all this debate it looks like they need to do something. When, if ever have you seen this kind of debate about Tamiya or Fujimi or Revell or etc. etc. kits purely on the basis of fit issues. Right, that's my lot, already said too much on this subject, I'll shut up now.

spad

Edited August 26, 2015 by spaddad

[Knight_Flyer]

Ideally Airfix needs to acknowledge there is a problem. If they only receive a few complaints because it's hit and miss they wouldn't be inclined to look into fixing it. The other scenario would be falling sales because modellers are no longer buying Airfix kits due to QC issues. Airfix would want to know why there is a decline in profit and take the appropriate action to reverse it.

[AnonymousAA72]

IIRC, I trimmed about a mm or so from the front of the cockpit tub front to get it to fit okay. Didn't have a pick of bother bar that. However, I'm getting very tired of having to trim and sand every flipping piece of the latest Airfix kits, largely down to that plastic they're using. I didn't have it on the Defint though but it did make assembling the Beau's engines very tricky.

Yep, My Swift is ready for painting , I've managed to get that together okay. I've started on a 1/72nd scale Gnat. Every sprue attachment point is very thick and seems to wrap around the piece, so two areas of cleaning up is required. The plastic is indeed soft in surrounding areas, and harder where the sprue attachment point is. Some parts are incredibly small (well,it is a Gnat!) which makes it (for me anyway) very difficult to clean up......this is why I think I had troubles with my Swifts cockpit.....Regarding Airfix's Lightning though.....I started a build thread on here a few years ago on an F2 conversion, and there's no mention then of any issues regarding the nose ring, intakes nor radome...hence my comments on potential problems with later issues of kits and plastic shrinkage and /or warping....

Edited August 26, 2015 by Bill Clark

[FalkeEins]

New Airfix kits are bears to build... my diary of the building the new 1/72 Typhoon--this is what I wrote Sep. 15, 2013.

"Anyway, in truth this is one of the most difficult to assemble kits I've seen in a long time. I mean the fidgety way it's engineered is insanity making. I just thank whatever Gods that made me that it all fitted together, sort of. Lots of clamping."

my blog was very similar - but after a bit of effort the end result was quite nice and I think this has been valid for the majority of these Airfix new tools

...Day 4 and 5 on the Typhoon. Lots of superglue, clamping and sanding off of locating pins and lugs to get the wings on and even then there were some horrible gaps.. I'm starting to think that a brand new kit shouldn't be this hard to put together!

[Mike]

I noticed the title of this thread last night, and have removed the (admittedly mild) profanity from it... remember, we've got kids viewing the forum, so keep any potty-mouth tendencies you might have off-line

[Ptmvarsityfan]

Have recently built the Airfix Gnat, Vampire, Lighting F2A

and Tiger Moth new tools and found they all required VERY

careful construction and were at least as difficult to build

as good quality short run and resin kits. Have built

five AModel DH60 Moths in the last few months and the

Airfix Tiger was if anything more difficult to build,

for example the cabane struts were broken on the sprue

and the whole models seems over engineered and a bit flimsy

when built. Think this sort of engineering could well

put youngsters off, nearly put me off after over 45 years

of kit building!

Cheers, Paul

[KITCAT]

I agree with Graham. Heller kits from the 70's in black boxes are generally great in terms of fit and detail. There are the odd horrors, but mainly due to ambitious design- the Mirage F1 is accurate and brilliantly designed, but suffers from trying to make a single or two seater with minimal gluing surface to support it. 60's to late 70's Airfix are wonderful in terms of fit, and pretty accurate as well. Build the Kingfisher and see the lack of gaps. Same for the even older Anson. The Invader and Marauder are pretty detailed too. Just sand off the rivets. Frog are really nice in terms of ease and accuracy of assembly, the surface detail is fine and restrained (check out the Attacker). I've got the 1958 box scale Rapide, and in a lot of ways it's nicer than Heller's. Certainly the parts breakdown makes painting a heck of a lot easier. Yes, the accuracy of Frog can be miles out, but they are products of their time, and the available references. Airfix were utterly proud of their Battle, and lauded the fact that it was produced from Fairey's original drawings. Sadly, when it came out, it was discovered that the PROTOTYPE's plans had been inadvertently supplied, hence the accuracy problems.

The trick is to seek out original (black or yellow Heller, bagged or early box Airfix) kits. The new box Kingfisher is short shot and flash ridden, the old blue plastic one is crisp and cleanly moulded. If you shop around, you can get old boxing so for less than the new ones. Seek out original Frog's and you will have a good, simple, well fitting basis for a show stopper. Try and save money on a Novo one and you will have a horrible monster made from a knackered old mould.

Monogram's heyday of the 70's saw some incredibly detailed kits that still stand up to the test of time (designed by the legendary Bill Koster of vacform fame, don'cha know). The problem is, we buy reissues and wonder why they are lacking.

Get an original and you will see what 60's and 70's standards REALLY were. Remember, these were made by hand from hardwood masters that were test fitted until they matched exactly, there was no theoretical building on a CAD machine and then waiting for the test shots to see how they went together. Surface detail was often added to the moulds during the cutting process. That's why most of it was raised. We laugh about Matchbox's trench digger, but adding engraved detail wasn't easy. Matchbox were using cutting edge technology at the time.

Yes but how did Mania manage to do lovely inscribed lines in their kits. Also having two half built I can say the fit is pretty good, excepting the Dinah kits but these have been sectioned so different marks can be done. Oh i nearly forgot the cop out with undercarriage legs on the Sonia, the wheels are just moulded onto the bottom of the spats- AH!

[Graham Boak]

I suspect the answer is "expensively" which is probably why the line was bought out. However, I think the Dinah was LS from the start, and certainly their G3M Nell had lovely recessed lines/rivets. I'm happy with the Dinah fit on the ones I have. Mania did the Sonia, Babs and Kate, that I know of, all of which appeared in Hasegawa boxes later. Mania's selling point was two-to-the-box, and it took a long while before Hasegawa used their tooling for the B5N1.

[Graham Boak]

Neil #85. You encouraged me to go have a look at my largely-unstarted Typhoon. Without going further into it than I'm ready to at the moment, it seems that the core problem is the order of assembly. If the wheel well/centre-section (B30) is attached to the lower wing first, then the wings assembled, they go together without any significant problem. The location of B30 is obviously important. When dry fitting it tended to pop out of its "frame" and thus foul the upper wing. Making the wings first may lead to problems with tabs on the wing-to-fuselage, and in particular the tab at the rear of the wing centre-section comes up against the pin location in the fuselage - something has to go! However this kind of wing/fuselage intersection is the classic filler-magnet anyway. Until I actually try it, I can say no more.

Paul #87. I've recommended similar kits in the past, but had many responses to the effect that these short run kits are far too difficult for the average modeller. Particularly, I might add, Amodel. Yet these actually go together more easily than Airfix? The world turned upside down.

[vince14]

Ideally Airfix needs to acknowledge there is a problem. If they only receive a few complaints because it's hit and miss they wouldn't be inclined to look into fixing it. The other scenario would be falling sales because modellers are no longer buying Airfix kits due to QC issues. Airfix would want to know why there is a decline in profit and take the appropriate action to reverse it.

That's where I'm at now - I'm reluctant to buy any more Airfix kits until I know I'll get a good one every time.

[Mr T]

i am building a Tamaiya Spitfire V and an Airfix Blenheim at the moment and the biggest difference in the way these kits build up is the plastic used. The plastic on the Spitfire is so much harder compared to the Blenheim and I think that is making the difference. The Blenheim is not that difficult, providing you look at the instructions carefully and prepare the parts properly. If Airfix used a harder plastic, i think a lot of problems would disappear. Will still build the Defiant as it is the nearest in shape I have yet seen as it looks as if a Merlin would fit in the nose unlike with most other kits of the type. BTW I had problems with the Lightning F6 nose and i am still not sure what it was as the intakes halves seemed to fit into each fuselage half fine, but the halves would not fit well with the intake in place, weird.

[Andy Robbins]

I think getting Airfix to admit to there being a problem would be a start. Their 'nobody else has complained' response was dismissive and insulting. I once complained to eduard because I had the misfortune to buy one of their pre revision mig 15's. Not only did they apologise, but they crucially admitted that there was a problem and they were working to resolve it. That's all we need. I keep meaning to take my stalled lightning to the Airfix stand at the next show I attend, to categorically demonstrate the fit issues. I don't want compensation, or even a grovelling apology. I just want an acknowledgement that my comments are valid and justified. I have to say that I really thought I was alone in the issues I was having. I've gained a great deal of comfort in the number of replies from those who share my experience.

[bryanm]

I've just started my Swift and had the same problem as the Wooksta. The nosewheel bay fits fine on its own, the cockpit tub fits fine on its own but if you follow the instructions and cement them together the assembly is too long. I fitted the nosewheel bay and then trimmed back the front of the cockpit tub until it went in. I've also done a bit of trimming of the intake splitter and it dry-fits OK. The intakes themselves were really good, well designed and a perfect fit which is a weak point on many models of jets.

More worrying is that the join along the fuselage spine appears to be slightly short shot and the dry fit suggests there will be a trough along the spine that will need filling. The mating faces aren't so wide here so I think it will need care when cleaning up. The wing fit was so good that it hardly needed glue.

All the sprues needed careful cleaning up as there were traces of flash just where you didn't want them, particularly around the sockets for the alignment pins. I wondered if the two halves of the mould were slightly misaligned as there was a slight step present on some parts.

Edited August 30, 2015 by bryanm

[noelh]

I haven't really had too many bad fit problems with Airfix kits yet, furiously touching wood. I did have minor struggle with the Airfix Lightning which I mostly attributed to my own hamfistedness. In terms of reviewers failing to point out the failings of a kit. This is nothing new. I remember when the Matchbox Meteor came out. There was some excitement and glowing reviews. When I bought mine I was astonished to find there was nowhere to fit the undercarriage legs which no reviewer ever pointed out. Not to mention it's other issues. But in the Airfix case there does seem to be quite a bit of variation. Clearly that's a production issue. The reasons for it can vary. Having worked in factory environmentI I have experience of that. Quality would vary across shifts which always puzzled the bosses but never me because you could see who was good and who wasn't. We all know about the risk of buying a Friday afternoon car. Perhaps there's a bit of that going on.

After all in the eyes of the factory workers over there, these things are mere toys. It's not life or death. Plus if you have a production target to meet. You will meet it. I remember being punished in one job because I was a bit slow and was supposedly holding up the line. I refused to accept the verbal warning because in our culture you can do that. The supervisor was not happy and it had later ramifications for me.

There was constant pressure to hit our production targets and there was a blame culture when mistakes were made. But we weren't making toys. We were assembling cardiac stents and that is life or death. So it's no surprise to me that there are production issues in far away India. You don't have to go that far to find shoddy QC.

If it became a big enough issue for Airfix they might consider moving production but that might very well end up raising prices. It's not a win win situation for us or Airfix.

[AnonymousAA72]

My Swift is in the paint shop. No real issues once I sorted out the nose gear bay and IP and cockpit. In fact it's been a delight to build - out of the box. I've even used the kits seat! I will replace the pitot tube though........

However, Saying that, I do have some five or six decades of modelling experience.....I think that some of these Airfix Series 1 or 2 kits, the 'pocket money' kits, are over engineered for the beginners end of the market. Mind you parts not fitting never put me off building kits in the 1960's!

[AaCee26]

i am building a Tamaiya Spitfire V and an Airfix Blenheim at the moment and the biggest difference in the way these kits build up is the plastic used. The plastic on the Spitfire is so much harder compared to the Blenheim and I think that is making the difference. The Blenheim is not that difficult, providing you look at the instructions carefully and prepare the parts properly. If Airfix used a harder plastic, i think a lot of problems would disappear.

Thanks Martin for raising plastic quality to the table. Airfix current plastic is both soft and brittle at the same time! How many Tomahawk sticks or Tiger Moth wing struts have been broken even by very experienced modellers? Plastic also makes details softer - just compare pilots to those from the previous Millenium! Also brand new moulds have plenty of flash in the edges to clean and after cleaning them there still might be fit issues. I have not built the Blenheim yet so time will show this case.

Regarding to design there are smart guys driving to accuracy and high detail level doing it. But a combination of poor quality of the plastic, problems with quality control and tight tolerances causes lot of problems.

As Blenheim was mentioned designers have been copying too closely nacelles of the Duxford Mk I modified from a Bolingbroke. I believe that in the future they will be more careful to check their reference. Same kit has the infamous flow-line issue with the clear parts but Airfix is not able to deliver replacement parts. They are new models in the catalog and after-sales service is not working as it should...

I have not built very many "new Airfix" kits but the Gnat wing did not fit well. Rear end fits too high without adjusting, First version of new Hawk wing sits too low, Vampire wing-fuselage seam has no support inside and it leaves gaps as well as the horizontal stabilizers. All of those have also overdone engrawing. I just saw the new He 111 which is better but not on top of the class.

There are several interesting kits in the Airfix range with pretty good alternatives. Gladiator, Tomahawk, FW 190, Bf 109E, He 111 and so on. Likely with less problems.

We have seen a very sharp rise like a Phoenix bird of this iconic company since Hornby take it over. It seems that there are quite a lot of issues for them to look. I hope all the best for them.

Cheers,

AaCee

Edited August 29, 2015 by AaCee26

[Graham Boak]

Just to place this in one kind of proportion: we wouldn't have many kits to make if we insisted on them all fitting perfectly out of the box without any fettling. Oh, and accurate in outline too, properly to scale, and without over-exaggerated details. Not too many small fiddly parts. While we're at it, accurate colour paints and correct markings on the transfers. And cheap. Made with just the right kind of plastic. Just like they were when we were kids, no?

If it doesn't fit, tell the manufacturer. Don't just get upset and throw it at the wall. It's only a few lumps of plastic and you're a modeller. Take a knife, a file, a sanding block, and make the (flipping) thing fit. Then tell us what you had to do, so that we are pre-warned, prepared, and pumped up ready to go. I'll get my coat.

[TomW]

Just to place this in one kind of proportion: we wouldn't have many kits to make if we insisted on them all fitting perfectly out of the box without any fettling. Oh, and accurate in outline too, properly to scale, and without over-exaggerated details. Not too many small fiddly parts. While we're at it, accurate colour paints and correct markings on the transfers. And cheap. Made with just the right kind of plastic. Just like they were when we were kids, no?

If it doesn't fit, tell the manufacturer. Don't just get upset and throw it at the wall. It's only a few lumps of plastic and you're a modeller. Take a knife, a file, a sanding block, and make the (flipping) thing fit. Then tell us what you had to do, so that we are pre-warned, prepared, and pumped up ready to go. I'll get my coat.

I take it as a given now that new Airfix kits need more care in their construction than the kits of old. And I must be one of the very few that really doesn't mind that fact, after all I consider myself a modeller of acceptable ability and able to overcome most fit issues. The QC issues with regards to clear sprues and damaged parts being dispatched for sale however aren't acceptable when other manufacturers are doing much better.

Just my two pennies worth, long may the Airfix revival continue.

Regards

Tom

[vince14]

Just to place this in one kind of proportion: we wouldn't have many kits to make if we insisted on them all fitting perfectly out of the box without any fettling. Oh, and accurate in outline too, properly to scale, and without over-exaggerated details. Not too many small fiddly parts. While we're at it, accurate colour paints and correct markings on the transfers. And cheap. Made with just the right kind of plastic. Just like they were when we were kids, no?

If it doesn't fit, tell the manufacturer. Don't just get upset and throw it at the wall. It's only a few lumps of plastic and you're a modeller. Take a knife, a file, a sanding block, and make the (flipping) thing fit. Then tell us what you had to do, so that we are pre-warned, prepared, and pumped up ready to go. I'll get my coat.

You wouldn't buy a new car, discover that the brakes don't work, and then spend the time and effort fixing it yourself because, hey, you're a mechanic - you'd take it back to the Dealer. And when you took it back, you wouldn't got away with the brakes still not working because he told you that two cars of the same model he sold last week had brakes that worked fine.

Airfix won't be getting any more money off of me until I know they've sorted out their QC issues. If a small manufacturer like WNW can make practically perfectly fitting kits every time, why can't Airfix?