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New 1/72 Airfix Typhoon


Johnson

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Hi All,

 

Just got an email from Hannants; an item on my 'Watching List' has come in! The new 1/72 Airfix Hawker Typhoon:

 

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/AX02041A

 

And on the Airfix site:

 

https://www.airfix.com/uk-en/hawker-typhoon-ib-1-72.html

 

Sounds like a new tool, anyone know for sure?

 

Thanks,

 

Charlie

 

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere and I'm posting in the wrong forum!

Edited by Johnson
Grammer!
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It's a reissue of their new-tool 1/72 kit first issued in 2013. It's pretty nice, but if accuracy, rather than ease of build and price, is something you care deeply about, it's a little less so than the Brengun kits.

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22 minutes ago, Procopius said:

It's a reissue of their new-tool 1/72 kit first issued in 2013. It's pretty nice, but if accuracy, rather than ease of build and price, is something you care deeply about, it's a little less so than the Brengun kits.

  

Details please?

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2 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

  

Details please?

It's a little undernourished along the rear fuselage, and it's I believe 1-2mm short. To me it looks a little wrong next to the Brengun kit, but I swore a lot less while building the Airfix.

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I assume that's 1-2mm in some specific place, eg the rear fuselage?  Overall, forget it.  Would a piece of plasticard between the halves sort out the nourishment or does it appear in depth too?  There was a good set of plans in an old Scale Models: my model room is still non-operational since the ceiling fell in but I'll see what I can dig out tonight.  (Metaphorically not actually.)  If only to compare the current Airfix offering with a lot of other Typhoon kits - although not the Brengun.

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6 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

I assume that's 1-2mm in some specific place, eg the rear fuselage?  Overall, forget it.  Would a piece of plasticard between the halves sort out the nourishment or does it appear in depth too?  There was a good set of plans in an old Scale Models: my model room is still non-operational since the ceiling fell in but I'll see what I can dig out tonight.  (Metaphorically not actually.)  If only to compare the current Airfix offering with a lot of other Typhoon kits - although not the Brengun.

My understanding is overall for length, and the undernourishment is overall, certainly in height. I think the Valiant Wings book mentions it as well.

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OK, I've found the AL Bentley plans (November 1975 Scale Models).  The new Airfix kit is perhaps a half to one mm too short.  I defy anyone to see this in the model, as opposed to a direct comparison with plans.  The rear fuselage is too shallow, but only by the thickness of the inked line of the top of the fuselage.  I admit not measuring the width, but as I (a fairly critical modeller in this respect) see it the new Airfix is pretty good, and I assume that the Brengun has to be at least  that much larger in order to produce an observable difference.  Perhaps we are just seeing the difference between two kits that test the unavoidable tolerances of design and production?

 

The Academy and Frog (cabdoor) kits are indeed that little bit longer and deeper - I didn't put their fuselages against the drawing just the new Airfix kit. 

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IMHO the fuselage is indeed a bit short. I studied it against Mr. Bentley's superb plans, and it occurred to me that about a 30-thou splice just behind the cockpit opening would not only fix the length but, by moving the tapered rear fuselage aft, cure the slight shallow profile described above

 

Another accuracy quibble is the too-tall fin - an easy fix thanks to Airfix's soft plastic. Doing only this mod improves the overall proportions significantly, IMHO. The worst accuracy issue may be the wing section's being too shallow at the root, though. That would be so hard to fix that you might as well start with the Brengun kit.

 

The kit is excellently engineered and a fun, easy build (the combination cockpit floor/radiator roof/wheel well is one of the most ingeniously designed kit parts I've ever seen, LOL). And the option to display full detail in one or both wing gun bays is a unique advantage, especially if you like to build to IPMS "out of the box" (US terminology) rules. 

 

 

Edited by MDriskill
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30 thou is indeed about the difference I see, but moving the rear fuselage aft won't affect any depth change because I was starting from the back of the fin anyway.  I must admit not looking at the cockpit position to decide whether any extension should be before or aft, or a mix, because I saw it as an overall shrinking rather than a local error.

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It’s been a long time since I looked at it, and no two modelers will interpret plastic-vs.-paper quite the same I guess. But I recall thinking the fuselage looked like it was done by two different teams working from Bentley’s drawings...one starting at the front, the other at the back, and each taking a beer break before they met!

 

In other words: align the rudder post with Bentley’s profile, moving forward all is well until you get to the cockpit; align the cowl front and move rearward, same thing. 

 

Note in particular the panels just below the cockpit sides (i.e., the former door location). The bottom edge is the correct length, but the rear edge is vertical where it should be sloped. The amount of length that would have been taken up by the slope corresponds closely to the fuselage’s shortfall, so this seemed like the spot to add a splice. 

 

My thought was the splice might be L-shaped. Cut downward at the rear of the cockpit opening, upward at the aft wing-fuselage joint, and lengthwise at some point to join the two. Only a little more fiddly than getting the PE fishplates onto the Brengun kit, LOL...

Edited by MDriskill
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2 hours ago, MDriskill said:

Only a little more fiddly than getting the PE fishplates onto the Brengun kit, LOL...

 

Ha, right now I'm dealing with (or avoiding dealing with) trying to get the fishplates OFF a 1/48 Monogram that I'm backdating!  I've got some nice sanding sticks that, when held next to the fuselage, appear far too large for the job.  I've got a nifty set of very small (narrow) files... if I can remember where they are...  I don't want to scratch up the whole rear fuselage- and one clever (?) idea was to put some protective tape either side of the fishes...

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I would begin with that great but under-appreciated British contribution to modeling culture: the no. 3 Swann-Morton scalpel, LOL. (In all seriousness, IMHO the world’s most indispensable tool for small-scale modeling...an X-Acto is a bludgeon in comparison.)

 

I'd start that job by scraping them down with a small curved blade (a no. 14 maybe).  That ought to get ya close enough to finish up with a narrow sanding stick or rolled-up fine sandpaper.

Edited by MDriskill
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I'd be a bit careful agonizing over small errors in overall length. There's more variability in the real things than is realized. Just the effect of thermal expansion will produce a variation of almost 10mm between -10 to 30 deg C, add in build up of tolerances, and you might have natural variation of 30mm, or almost 0.5 mm in 1:72.

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2 minutes ago, 3DStewart said:

I'd be a bit careful agonizing over small errors in overall length. There's more variability in the real things than is realized. Just the effect of thermal expansion will produce a variation of almost 10mm between -10 to 30 deg C, add in build up of tolerances, and you might have natural variation of 30mm, or almost 0.5 mm in 1:72.

Stewart, your post ignores the fact that we LOVE agonizing over small "errors" (or are they?).

 

I must be a cr*p modeller, because by the time I've finished hacking, filling and sanding, the dimensions of my models are rarely as they were when in the box!

 

Regards

 

Martin

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By all means worry about them if they really matter to you, but if you're not careful you end up correcting small things, build times go through the roof, you get disillusioned, your uncompleted kit pile gets bigger and a good kit gets a reputation as being unbuildable. 

 

As my father used to say, "Life is too short for such things."

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28 minutes ago, Andre B said:

Mmm...

The Airfix Typhoon wasn't meassured with Lidar?

Cheers / André

No, as the only surviving Typhoon is in the RAF Museum, and LIDAR can't be used there as it can't be used with the general public around for safety reasons, and the aircraft are too close together to set up the LIDAR device anyway (according to the researcher from Airfix who gave a lecture at the RAF Museum a few years ago).

 

Does the 1/24 scale Typhoon have the same problems? As Airfix are known to have physically measured the Hendon Typhoon, I would have thought that the same measurements were used for both kits.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I found the Airfix one harder to build than the Brengun; the engineering on the Airfix seemed good on the sprue (e.g. the cockpit floor/wheel weels already mentioned), but I found it impossible to get the radiator in without spreading the fuselage under the chin. One one build I also messed up the wing alignment, and had to sort out a gap at the upper wing-fuselage join. The Bregun just seems more crisp too (e.g. panel lines on the Airfix that are on surfaces curving up to the top and bottom of the aircraft are indistinct, line panel lines on the sides are deeper have squarer edges).

 

This thread has some good close-up photos of surface detail differences in the two kits:

 

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On 3/30/2019 at 10:17 AM, 3DStewart said:

I'd be a bit careful agonizing over small errors in overall length. There's more variability in the real things than is realized. Just the effect of thermal expansion will produce a variation of almost 10mm between -10 to 30 deg C, add in build up of tolerances, and you might have natural variation of 30mm, or almost 0.5 mm in 1:72.

 

Aircraft are not built up out of small pieces assembled by starting at one end, which could indeed lead to a build-up of tolerances, although each tolerance is pretty small.  Aircraft fuselages are assembled into major pieces in jigs, so any growth in tolerances can only be from the combination a small number of major parts.  For example, the Spitfire wing span is made of the combination of a fuselage frame, two wing halves and two wing tips.  That's only four joins, of five pieces, of which only the wingtips could be open to any variation in shape or size.  I gather that there is some variation in tip shape, but how much this is due to variation in the manufacturing of the originals and how much to subsequent hand-making of parts since is unknown to me.  However you would have to specifically exclude the latter before reaching any convincing conclusions.

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Graham, what were the tolerances on the overall dimensions of the major subassemblies you mention? There will have been some, or if not (maybe overall span didn't matter) there will still have been variation in size, even on jig built assemblies.

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Well, I remember on those diagrams about checking the rigging (on a "modern" metal airplane, that basically means "see if it is bent or not") that it usually says something on the order of "maximum variation 2 inches"- that's from wingtip to tail, for example, so a longer distance than fuselage front-to-back.  2 inches in 1/72 is .028, or about .7 mm.  I don't think that's an "error" that I'd be worrying over, nor is it a variance that would allow me, in good conscience, to shrug and say, "Well, you know, aircraft can vary one from another..."

 

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