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The way ahead for Airfix


Denford

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Bit of a broad statement I think

Other mainstream companies put out a few dogs as well, I only bought Italeri's Wessex because I worked on them

It fits where it touches, the nose on the HU.5 is a joke.

I wouldn't touch most of their other stuff with a large barge pole. Theres a few Revell kits I'd steer well clear of as well

plus a few others. Ever heard of "Dragon fit" Some of there stuff makes Airfix look like childs play.

Airfix have issues yes but dont make out they are the only ones with fit issues because its blatantly untrue.

Yes I have, I binned a Dragon Ta152 as it was so bad. Anyway - the topic is 'the way ahead for Airfix', not Italeri, Revell or Dragon!

I love the way people read posts and then decide you've said something you haven't. I NEVER said Airfix are the only one with issues on some kits but this is a thread about Airfix and the way ahead for Airfix should be for them to fix the problems. When I post something I mean what I say, not something else, please refrain from saying that I've said or implied something that I haven't.

thanks

Mike

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My opinion about recent Airfix kits is that fit is often pretty good - but you have to do everything perfect. That is, there is no room for the smallest mistake. Two examples are the 1/48 Westland Lynx and the 1/48 Javelin. When assembling the Lynx cabin, the smallest mistake means that tne body halves don't fit. The same goes with the Javelin air intakes (thank you Mr. Airfix for the FOD covers!). I am pretty sure that you can get a perfect fit there - at least if you are a better builder than I am.

As many have pointed out, Tamiya is still No 1, with Hasegawa as No 2. But I regard Airfix as far better than many other brands. And in the end it is up to the builder. I recently managed to get a bad fit on a Tamiya (Gloster Meteor). And I am pretty sure that most of the mistakes on that build are on me, not on Tamiya.

Edited by Bjorn
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For those who haven't read anything I've written, my Airfix Do17 is a total pig of a kit and is sitting there part assembled. Nothing fitted correctly in the cockpit and the fuselage is bowed out round the bomb bay, so much so the doors don't fit properly and there's large gaps on either side of the 'closed' bomb bay doors. Perhaps I need to rip out the internal bulkheads and see if that cures it but I'm guessing it won't.

I built their recent Typhoon and no matter how much sanding of internal parts I did the front fuselage just would not close, so it's now about 1mm or so wider at the nose as I gave up and used filler. The Hurricane Mk I's fuselage also wouldn't close, so that's been fillered, not as bad as the Typhoon though. Also when I fitted the wings to the fuselage, there was a big step at the front which needed much sanding to get about flush with the forward fuselage. Suffice to say I will not be getting any more Airfix Hurricanes or Typhoons. As a contrast I build the Academy Typhoon at the same time as the Airfix kit and that was a joy to build by comparison, everything fitted properly resulting in a much more enjoyable build. Same goes for the Hasegawa Hurricane Mk I built at the same time as the Airfix kit. Granted I think the Airfix Typhoon looks better than the Academy Typhoon when built but the issue is the Academy and Hasegawa kits were much nicer to build.

I don't want and don't enjoy beating kits into submission. I expect short run kits to have fit issues but not brand new all singing all dancing (the way some people drool over new Airfix kits, you'd think they would be able to sing and dance!) mainstream kits. I know I'm not the only one experiencing issues with new Airfix kits, as I've read other people's posts too. So my message to some people is, read what the people who've built new Airfix kits say about the new Airfix kits, both good and bad and stop glossing over anybody's posts that say they've had issues. It's clear to me Airfix kits can be hit or miss and the way forward for Airfix is to sort this out so the kits are consistently good to build and QC issues minimised!

thanks

Mike

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On an impulse build I purchased an airfix 1/72 Halifax III from my local newsagent which was selling a few airfix kits at the time. I had no idea what was in the box and once opening that and comparing it to a trumpeter wellington or a Hasegawa Mitchell I was shocked and made a promise to never build an airfix kit again.

This was basically a 1960s kit being sold in the 2010s as a new product, and as a result airfix at that time had lost my customer, Since Hornby took over some sense has been knocked into the brand and after time airfix have really caught my interest, I built the new 1/72 EE Lightning F.2a recently (check signature) and was amazed at the quality of the kit, so much so, I've purchase some more airfix kits and at the moment Airfix have quite a good amount of kits in my stash, 1/48 Javelin, spitfire, hurricane just to name a few, I'm also now currently building the new tooled Beaufighter TF.X in a WIP on britmodeller and I am so impressed and enjoying the build. Airfix are venturing out into tooling new replacement kits if their old stock, He-111, beaufighter, ME-109 for example, and also venturing into kits that we haven't seen in a while (old tools other brands) or even at all, Shackleton MR.2, Whitley and 1/48 javelin included.

I pretty much agree with you about the old kits. I no longer think it is healthy for Airfix to be releasing stuff like the old Halifax, Airfix have moved on from that type of thing now with their new kits and need to rebuild a reputation for quality. For me Airfix needs to decide whether it is a quality manufacturer or not, right now Airfix having the old Halifax in the same range as the new Beaufighter is like BMW having the bubble car in the same range as their latest 5 series.

That is not to say that I don't personally enjoy building kits like the old Halifax as I do, a lot of these old kits are fun to build and depending on how old they are can still be made into very nice models.

This is mainly down to each modeller taste. Personally I don't mind some filling here and there, within certain limits though. Most modellers however would prefer to use that time and effort for painting or detailing and see the need for filling/sanding/adjusting an unnecessary burden

I am quite happy to do a little bit of filling here and there as well, with certain limits as you say. For me this is part of model making, perhaps I would miss filling and sanding?

Edited by old thumper
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For me I think the way forward would be for them to seriously address their QC issues, four out of the last five Airfix kits I have bought have had problems.

1/72 Lightning: poorly moulded Red Top missiles -fins deformed/missing

1/48 Hurricane: flaws in canopy

1/72 Defiant: flaws in canopy

1/72 Whitley: decal sheet badly scuffed/marked

:weep:

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After reading your statements on the Airfix situations for possible future modelling I find the final line far more disturbing (he says while sitting alone, no fairer sex in voice range and each day pondering the date of retirement!!!)

Oh well, back to modelling.......

Paul

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Sometimes there might be a little sanding or a little filling here and there, but that to me is what modelling is. If we take that away from the hobby there is less for us to do.

I don't see what point you're making. Are you implying that the more we have to do, the better?

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I don't think you can make a kit purely from a lidar scan but you can certainly check the 3D model that will be the kit against it. Given how many "unbuildable" kits that have come out since the onset of CAD/CAM due to very suspect shapes, I think Airfix's policy on getting the shape absolutely right is the way to go. If they can get their tooling up to the standard of some other companies they will surpass everyone.

New for old works as well to rid themselves of some very disheartening models that can only be good for their image too.

I wish there would be just a little cooperation between the companies though as 2 Shackletons in 1 year is a bit of an ask when one of them I'm sure could do a very competent 1/32 Lightning or Buccaneer instead. And if Revell save themselves with a much better effort on the Hercules engined variant of the Halifax then Airfix could do a new Victor instead.

As for the fit issue I haven't done a lot of the new kits but I've found their fit tight for the most part and a very careful fit check before you glue is essential. Not had any flaws either but that might be luck on my part.

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Yes I have, I binned a Dragon Ta152 as it was so bad. Anyway - the topic is 'the way ahead for Airfix', not Italeri, Revell or Dragon!

I love the way people read posts and then decide you've said something you haven't. I NEVER said Airfix are the only one with issues on some kits but this is a thread about Airfix and the way ahead for Airfix should be for them to fix the problems. When I post something I mean what I say, not something else, please refrain from saying that I've said or implied something that I haven't.

thanks

Mike

Didnt imply anything mate, your quote was "Airfix should be able to give us kits that fit properly. Other companies do, so why can't Airfix?"

The way that reads Airfix make poorly fitting kits the others dont.

Prap's you might like to put "In my opinion' or clarify you statements a bit better if you dont want them misread.

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I love Airfix kits (if it gets cold enough, ahum) and have been building them since the seventies. I like the new kits, but after getting a couple of the newer kits, Lancacster, C-47, Spitfire Mk XII, Valiant and the Nimrod to name a few, all kits have poor clear parts. For me this spoils what are good accurate affordable kits, sure there are some fit issues and some warpage here and there, but this is all fixable. I would love to get my hands on the new Spitfire, Hurricane, He-111 and Defiant when it arrives in 1/48, but the poor (to me) clear parts mean I'm reluctant to get them. So that's the area I would love Airfix to improve.

David.

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Airfix... hmm.

Their choice of subjects is spot on, and they unashamedly aim themselves at the popular and youth markets in a way that no other firm is doing, and they need to be applauded for that. Having said that they are also seemingly doing their best to disengage themselves from trading with smaller suppliers. I am as of now still waiting for my Whitleys to be delivered.

Their kits are generally good; I haved particularly liked the Gladiator, Vampire and the 1/72 Typhoon, and a friend of mine is enjoying the Dornier after having raved about the Defiant and Spitfire 22. Having said that the same person was rather less complimentary about the Blenheim I. I do find that, by and large, the fit is reasonable, though they do require more filler than I think they ought to for modern kits. The tolerances are very tight, but part of any modelling project is the planning and dry-fitting, so that is easily overcome.

I have not found any of the quality issues in any of the kits I have, and have had very few reported to me . I did have a Vampire brought back to me recently that had the plastic parts for a Zero inside, but I think we can safely say that was an extreme case.

With regard to their subject selection policy, that is how they have chosen to do things, and there are certainly plenty of aircraft in museums or otherwise available to cater for most of our needs. I refer other BMers to the howls of anguish whenever Trumpyboss bring something out that has not received the amount of research we would like.

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Can I shift the emphasis a bit.

Airfix is a commercial venture so they need to match their costs to expected sales. Hence they will restrict their output to subjects for which the pre-production costs are the lowest (LIDAR and CD). They then need to choose subjects that have a reasonably high marketability. They need to recover their costs, fund their R&D and make a good margin for their owners/shareholders.

They then need to focus on the costs of production. Not all of us can afford a Tamiya Mosquito or a WNW so they need to price at a sensible level which will mean sourcing abroad. There will be QC failures and these need to be monitored and managed. This is harder when your supply chain goes straight from India/China to a distributor in the UK.

I think we need to take these factors into consideration when we make the judgements we do.

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I've seen a lot of reports on this site about poor Airfix parts fit and QC in the last year, but apparantly from a very small handfull of people. So on the basis that when things go right people don't pipe up about it, I'd like to mention that whereas I've had problems with decal register and carrier film issues over the years, I've never had any fit problems I'd consider outside the realm of curable by minor fettling with the kits produced since the Hornby takeover. Neither have I ever broken a part removing it from the sprue, although I got close a few times when they were using their thickest sprue gates a couple of years ago. Perhaps experience with extracting the struts from early Roden and Amodel kits has influenced my there.

Never had a problem with transparancies either. In older kits, yes, but not the last 5 years or so. Have had a few hairline flow marks, but none that showed up after the canopy was in place.

It'd be nice if there was a poll conducted to give an accurate incidence of duff kits in the current production, but short of forcing people to reports their assessment at gunpoint I can't see how to do that. I'd expect Airfix to have a good idea already. They must have figures for returns/complaints, and since they most likely plan on staying in business I'd be suprised if they weren't in the process of addressing any issue.

Regarding choice of subjects, looking at it from their point of view (i.e. the markets they're aiming at) I think what they're doing makes good sense. Of course, as primarily a WWI modeller I'm not part of the target audience, but I also do early British jets and the occasional WWII type, so I have been buying most of their recent output anyway, and building it rather than adding to the stash.

Paul.

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Airfix is a commercial venture so they need to match their costs to expected sales. Hence they will restrict their output to subjects for which the pre-production costs are the lowest (LIDAR and CD). They then need to choose subjects that have a reasonably high marketability. They need to recover their costs, fund their R&D and make a good margin for their owners/shareholders.

They then need to focus on the costs of production. Not all of us can afford a Tamiya Mosquito or a WNW so they need to price at a sensible level which will mean sourcing abroad. There will be QC failures and these need to be monitored and managed. This is harder when your supply chain goes straight from India/China to a distributor in the UK.

So is a company like Revell. They are comparable to Airfix I think. Both do the molding in places and have long supply chains.

How come Revell clear parts are nice and clear with no molding flaws ?? Is it just better quality control ??

Edited by mossieramm
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I've seen a lot of reports on this site about poor Airfix parts fit and QC in the last year, but apparantly from a very small handfull of people.

Roughly half the people in this topic state they have issues with Airfix kits. That's a significant portion of the sample of people posting in this topic.

I grant you that disgruntled people are more likely to complain that happy customers, but even accounting for that it means there are loads of people who feel Airfix can improve. And why not? Every manufacturer can improve. Some of them take the time to do it, or actively engage with their customers on such issues. Airfix seems to choose not to do this.

If you don't have issues because your expectations of a kit are different or because you've just been lucky not to get a kit with dodgy parts, good for you, but don't use that as an argument to say there are no issues. Plenty of people feel different and that has to be respected.

I don't understand why you would want to argue all is fine with Airfix; as a customer, it is not in your interest to give a manfacturer an easy ride when there is plenty of evidence they can step up their game. Letting them know and demanding improvements can lead to a win-win situation for everyone.

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For those who haven't read anything I've written, my Airfix Do17 is a total pig of a kit and is sitting there part assembled. Nothing fitted correctly in the cockpit and the fuselage is bowed out round the bomb bay, so much so the doors don't fit properly and there's large gaps on either side of the 'closed' bomb bay doors. Perhaps I need to rip out the internal bulkheads and see if that cures it but I'm guessing it won't.

I built their recent Typhoon and no matter how much sanding of internal parts I did the front fuselage just would not close, so it's now about 1mm or so wider at the nose as I gave up and used filler. The Hurricane Mk I's fuselage also wouldn't close, so that's been fillered, not as bad as the Typhoon though. Also when I fitted the wings to the fuselage, there was a big step at the front which needed much sanding to get about flush with the forward fuselage. Suffice to say I will not be getting any more Airfix Hurricanes or Typhoons. As a contrast I build the Academy Typhoon at the same time as the Airfix kit and that was a joy to build by comparison, everything fitted properly resulting in a much more enjoyable build. Same goes for the Hasegawa Hurricane Mk I built at the same time as the Airfix kit. Granted I think the Airfix Typhoon looks better than the Academy Typhoon when built but the issue is the Academy and Hasegawa kits were much nicer to build.

I don't want and don't enjoy beating kits into submission. I expect short run kits to have fit issues but not brand new all singing all dancing (the way some people drool over new Airfix kits, you'd think they would be able to sing and dance!) mainstream kits. I know I'm not the only one experiencing issues with new Airfix kits, as I've read other people's posts too. So my message to some people is, read what the people who've built new Airfix kits say about the new Airfix kits, both good and bad and stop glossing over anybody's posts that say they've had issues. It's clear to me Airfix kits can be hit or miss and the way forward for Airfix is to sort this out so the kits are consistently good to build and QC issues minimised!

thanks

Mike

An interesting statement, ive bought and built numerous copies of both kits and had no issues at all, a little care aside they went together well, the Typhoon is tricky but no filler on cowls, etc... as far as im concerned , whilst not Tamiya fit, they are perfectly servicable and good kits, the Typhoon (24th and 72nd )the 24th arguably being one of the all time greats due to the detail and surface patina which IMHO is unsurpassed at the moment any any company in terms of capturing character.

Edited by markjames68
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If you don't have issues because your expectations of a kit are different or because you've just been lucky not to get a kit with dodgy parts, good for you, but don't use that as an argument to say there are no issues. Plenty of people feel different and that has to be respected.

I don't understand why you would want to argue all is fine with Airfix; as a customer, it is not in your interest to give a manfacturer an easy ride when there is plenty of evidence they can step up their game. Letting them know and demanding improvements can lead to a win-win situation for everyone.

Do me the courtesy of not putting words in my mouth, if you please. I didn't say there were no issues, only that I don't (yet) have any. Never said all is fine with Airfix either, but I personally am only going to let them know about an issue I have when I have one. Those people who have had problems, I hope they've told Airfix, in reasonable terms, so that improvements can occur, which is what I was alluding to when I said I expected Airfix to have figures for complaints etc. Posting on a modelling forum that you've thrown another kit against the wall or binned it in a hissy fit helps not one jot, justified or not.

Paul.

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being someone who mostly builds airfix, and has a lot of problems with fit, Ill say the problems by in large are self inficted by the modeller, by that I don't mean were all rubbish modellers, I mean airfix kits don't react well to certain modelling approaches, all the new airfix kits I've found to fit badly, most I reattempted, they fit perfectly out of the box, problem comes once paint and glue is involved, best approach with all airfix kits now is to put it togethor, then start painting

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Bit of a broad statement I think

Other mainstream companies put out a few dogs as well, I only bought Italeri's Wessex because I worked on them

It fits where it touches, the nose on the HU.5 is a joke.

I wouldn't touch most of their other stuff with a large barge pole. Theres a few Revell kits I'd steer well clear of as well

plus a few others. Ever heard of "Dragon fit" Some of there stuff makes Airfix look like childs play.

Airfix have issues yes but dont make out they are the only ones with fit issues because its blatantly untrue.

Don't think anybody said here that Airfix is the only maker of bad fitting kits. As you mentioned Italeri, this company has a long track record of badly fitting kits, with the added bonus of some wild inaccuracies and prices that increase continuously.

Dragon too has a let's say interesting reputation for fit, although recent aircraft kits are in a different league (the Ta-152 is after all a 20+ year old kit). Monogram too always enjoyed a reputation for the less than stellar fit of many of their kits.

The real reasons why Airfix seems to be more openly criticised is that with this being a British forum, Airfix kits feature widely in most modellers stashes. The brand is also dear to many for historical reasons and any thread mentioning them is likely to attract a lot of attention. Posts about Italeri generally attract little attention.

Just to add a different perspective, here in Italy Italeri is criticised a lot for the reasons mentioned above, and they don't even issue that many new kits. And there are those who defend Italeri regardless of what is pointed out, a bit like sometimes happens here with Airfix. And of course, there aren't that many discussions about Airfix kits (unfortunately also because of the less than good distribution in this country)

I am quite happy to do a little bit of filling here and there as well, with certain limits as you say. For me this is part of model making, perhaps I would miss filling and sanding?

Could well happen, although I'm not sure I would feel the same... I have to admit that there are moments when I wish that Tamiya could do a kit of every subject in every scale... :lol:

Edited by Giorgio N
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Do me the courtesy of not putting words in my mouth, if you please. I didn't say there were no issues, only that I don't (yet) have any. Never said all is fine with Airfix either, but I personally am only going to let them know about an issue I have when I have one. Those people who have had problems, I hope they've told Airfix, in reasonable terms, so that improvements can occur, which is what I was alluding to when I said I expected Airfix to have figures for complaints etc. Posting on a modelling forum that you've thrown another kit against the wall or binned it in a hissy fit helps not one jot, justified or not.

Paul.

I apologize if you feel I put words in your mouth, your statement 'apparantly from a very small handfull of people.' struck me as disqualifying the opinions of rather significant numbers of people on this forum who clearly do have issues. If that's not the case then that's my mistake for interpreting the comment wrongly.

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I dare say,... do the complaints refer to recent or old kits? There is a huge difference between the Airfix of, say 1980, and Airfix of 2015. If there are issues with recent kits, yes, then Airfix has a problem. If we are talking about kits released thirty or forty years ago, well, that's something else. Somebody had a lot of bad things to say about their Do 17; but are we talking about the old one? Then it is not so importnat that I found it in those days a lovely kit of a lovely plane.

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Disagree. Airfix fit is way behind Tamiya. I've had a few new Airfix kits where the fit in places was terrible, not to mention warped parts and thick sprue gates. I don't care about panel lines being too deep, I'd rather the things fit together properly.

thanks

Mike

And Tamiya makes one kit in a year, so happy modelling.

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