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Xtradecal revises decal sheet for Jet Provost - why?


tonyh

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Hi

 

Like many people I expect, I picked up a couple (4) AIRFIX Jet Provosts from ALDI recently.

 

I looked to Hannants for their decal sheet because I fancied XN664 at RAF Little Rissington - which I drive past every year on my way to RAF Fairford.

 

However, I see they're revising their sheet XR72250 and replacing it with X72291.

 

Anyone know why they're revising it?

 

Tony

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As far as I can see comparing 72250 off the Hyperscale review with 72291 from Hannants page, the latter has 2 new aircraft on it, a Provost T.52 of the Kuwait Airf Force from the early 1960s & a T.3 from 6 flying school 1967, but is otherwise the same as 72250.

Steve.

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I too own four kits, two of which are built and also own the original Xtradecal sheet.  At one point I was contemplating building the Ceylon Air Force machine, however on closer scrutiny I noticed that this sheet only had four national insignia (two large and two small). Both the supplied decal guide and photos indicate that two of the larger wing insignia were missing. 

 

At the time I did write to Hannamts to highlight this issue and received a reply to say that they were very surprised that this error had not been found prior to release. They were going to revamp this sheet in the future and I was promised a replacement sheet. Now that this revised sheet has been announced, let’s see what happens? 

 

Cheers.. Dave

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Dave has it right, apart from the extra aircraft, definitely an extra pair of Sri Lankan wing markings. I my defense, Mark Davies, Kiwikitbasher on here, failed to pick it up in his review on Hyperscale. Interestingly I can only see that review, no one seems to have them for sale now, there has possibly been a recall.

Steve

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Steve, 

My email to Hannamts was well and truly over one year ago (Sep 16). I would think that they decided to just wait until their initial stocks sold out rather than a sudden recall. Perhaps they took the odds that the Sri Lankan scheme would not be that popular and just left things as they were. 

 

It also appears that the initial sheet had a large amount of dayglo striping which has been left off the revised sheet. I suspect they expect modellers to use the Airfix kit decals however that may not help those who have just purchased the ‘starter kit’ in mass from Aldi. By the way, for those who haven’t yet used the kits Dayglo panels, make sure you have a decent supply of your favourite decal softening / setting solution cause you’re gonna need it!! 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

 

 

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You could be right, they'd have been popular enough to have sold out quite fast. I'm still on the look out for a sheet, fancy a camo'd one & quite like the Macaw's one too, you want my Sri Lankan markings when I do? :)

Steve.

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Happy to send you the 79 Sqd camo decals Steve, but have plans to do one of my other two JP’s as the Macaw jobbie. Now if Hannamts still have my email and remember to honour their free decal promise, you can have both schemes!! 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

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Interesting. When I got my Xtradecals order last year, there was a pair of Sri Lankan markings as a small addendum to make up the right number.

Once I build that and the South Arabian Air Force bird, I'll have gone through the entire sheet! I've built the starter kit too, with the decals included.

I can probably bodge together the markings for the Kuwaiti and 6FTS aircraft from the stash. The blue tail on the Kuwaiti one looks nice, though I also have references for an all-metal finish plane.

If anyone's looking for further inspiration, I can thoroughly recommend From Jet Provost To Strikemaster, by Dave Watkins (Grub Street, ISBN-13: 9-781-910690-35-2). I managed to get my hands on a copy for a song at the Frankfurt Book Fair the other month (hint: go on the last day when a lot of exhibitors prefer to sell off their wares at a discount rather than lug everything back to base).

I wish builders well in their attempts to remove the prominent 24 from the nose dayglo strips supplied in the Airfix kit so they can build the CFS and 6FTS options.

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Thanks for the additional information about the addendum sheet and ISBN number for a for a good JP reference Steve, you can never have too many books in ones personal library. Do you have any photos of your JP collection as yet, seems like a most impressive and colourful display.  

 

Cheers.. Dave. 

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I have it on good authority that Santa will be bringing me some suitable photographic software if I have been a good boy, so I will see what I can do in a week or so. My Sword JP5 and Kiwi Strikemaster are on the same shelf of the display case for a bit of contrast.

It appears I got too familiar with the author of the JP book - it's David Watkins, not Dave...

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  • 1 month later...

Just to restart this topic, had notification from Hannants this morning that the REVISED decal sheet for the Hunting Jet Provost T.3/T.3a/T4/ T51/T52 are back in stock.  Ordered it an hour ago and its already in the post on its way to me:- 

 

LINKY   https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/X72291

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Hmm, instructions for the camo 79 Sqn Aircraft still wrong, as are the decals for the grey one. And the silver, camo and light grey aircraft all had different stencils, so you can’t ‘Use the kit decals’ as suggested

Edited by Dave Fleming
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1 hour ago, Dave Fleming said:

Hmm, instructions for the camo 79 Sqn Aircraft still wrong, as are the decals for the grey one. And the silver, camo and light grey aircraft all had different stencils, so you can’t ‘Use the kit decals’ as suggested

Wrong in what way Dave? This is one I'd like to do. Not too worried about the stencils, any excuse to omit is better than none. :)

Steve. 

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On the camo aircraft, it should have a wrap round on the leading edge, and the plan view camo demarcations are not that accurate.

 

39540056094_b85c2139ec_h.jpgXtradecal error_o by David Fleming, on Flickr

 

On the grey aircraft, the grey band around the roundel (on the yellow band) is not a regular shape as shown, but a more irregular shape

 

26378977128_5ceba8f270_z.jpgjpCapture by David Fleming, on Flickr

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Thanks for that Dave, I can see your concerns, re the 79 sqn camo, it appears to me as though the wing camo is about right but the angle of the fuselage demarcation is astray, no doubt port sides views exist on the net?

Steve.

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There are a few - XR649 is unusual in that it carried two completely different camou schemes when with 79 (I identify them as 'green nose and grey nose for obviosu reasons!) The first was the 'green nose' version, which is shown above and had the squadron bars, she was later repainted into the other scheme (with the grey nose) which was the scheme the other 79 JPs carried (Except XS219), so when checking pics you need to be aware of which scheme you are looking at!

 

If you check the above view along side the Xtradecal plans, the tail plane demarcations are wrong, especially the port side, and the wing demarcations are only very roughly approximate (The grey on the starboard wing starting 1/3 way along the alieron, whereas the drawing shows it at the end, the shape of the grey areas is quite different)

 

There were 5  camo'd 79 JPs in total

 

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Think you will find, this decal sheet is still the only game in town Dave until/unless somebody else brings a new sheet of decals out.............still enough schemes on their to keep me happy

 

Is their nothing in the modelling world that is perfect without somebody finding fault with it?

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22 hours ago, rayprit said:

Think you will find, this decal sheet is still the only game in town Dave until/unless somebody else brings a new sheet of decals out.............still enough schemes on their to keep me happy

 

Is their nothing in the modelling world that is perfect without somebody finding fault with it?

 

Yeah, I have the sheet, it just frustrates me that simple errors that would take 5 minutes on Google to check creep in. I suspect the camo scheme is based on the one in the CMR kit, which had the same errors.

 

I do live in hope that someday Airfix re-release the kit with the 79 option as I’d like to do them all. (They did announce their old T3 in those colours back in 1980ish, but it never appeared after they went bust)

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As you say dave, simple errors, but I think if your the designer of the set you would tend to go cross -eyed after a few hours, especially if this is not the only sheet your doing and your desk or room is full of reference material for upto 20-30 aircraft..........at the end of the day...............as they say on here"I am calling this finished"  he may well have intended to rectify the faults you mentioned and it slipped his mind........i have seen builds on here that they have called finished only to have it pointed out to them a decal is on the wrong way around or a particular mark of aircraft didnt have a particular part as the model period is out of sinc.  We have some nice builds going on on here at the moment, but some lapse of memory makes them forget an item they were going to add or remove........same with the decal sheets........end of a frustrating day and a lapse of memory.. Thats all you can put it down to. 

I remember Model decal when they were notified or found out about an error that they usually added a little correction sheet to the next batch of printed decals........thats the good ole days kicking in..............either way, airfix made a nice kit with their current JP and the Xtradecal sheet goes a long way to adding a few extra variations to our collections

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