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New 1:24 Airfix Spitfire mk1a


geedubelyer

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13 minutes ago, geedubelyer said:

 

 

One thing that is odd is the colour sheet for the painting and decals. It's double sided but has the same scheme on both faces....🤔

It looks like a misprint. Can anyone shed any light on things?

It's the same schemes as the original release and you can download the instructions here https://www.vintage-airfix.com/dlinstructions.php?file=Spitfire-12001.pdf

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55 minutes ago, geedubelyer said:

One thing that is odd is the colour sheet for the painting and decals. It's double sided but has the same scheme on both faces....🤔

It looks like a misprint. Can anyone shed any light on things?

 

If you send me a PM with your email I can send you a scan of mine, but I don't want to post a pic (being stingy with Flickr!)

 

Didn't see WIPs response (ships in the night...) but that may not be the decals in your kit? The instructions I have are for QJ-B (92 Sqn) and DW-K (610 Sqn).

 

Edit

Looking back though the posts I see that the latest release it is LO-B & KL-B, not what I had in my kit. Not surprising I suppose as its a re-release of the vintage kit.

 

Sorry to blather on :mental:

 

Cheers

Edited by Johnson
SNAFU
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Many thanks guys. As it turns out I may invest in a set of paint masks for the markings in an attempt to create the archetypal BoB Spitfire in my eyes. 

I suspect we may all have a vision in mind when someone mentions BoB markings. 

For me it should be green over earth/sky undersides with roundels above and below the wing and a yellow edge to the fuselage roundel. 

I believe Montex make a couple of sets that might suit. 

There are likely to be other purchases of aftermarket along the way I suspect. 

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23 hours ago, geedubelyer said:

It's landed😮

 

One thing that is odd is the colour sheet for the painting and decals. It's double sided but has the same scheme on both faces....🤔

It looks like a misprint. Can anyone shed any light on things?

 

Mine was exactly the same. Airfix sent me a pdf of the correct second side. A printing error somewhere, I'll bet many are like that. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hopefully Eduard will now come to the party with some detail sets for these kits - Spitfire, Hurricane and 109E. Decals instead of PE would be a nice change.

 

Still looking forward to some new after market cockpit and wheel well sets for these aircraft too! C'mon Quickboost, Barracuda, Eduard et al!  :) 

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There’s always hope. ModelMonkey has released a number of beautiful resin sets to upgrade and correct the Airfix 1/24 scale Mustang over the last couple of years. He has started to do Spitfire parts, hopefully he could be convinced to do more.  
 

Richard

 

Edited by RZP
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9 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

These kits have been regularly on sale for 50 years. What do you think has made them more attractive to the after-market now?

 

Sales.

 

When these kits first came out 'after market' was a term I used to describe that time I had to myself after helping my mother with her fruit and vege shopping.

 

These days 'after market' is the first thing I look to for a new kit release, especially exhausts, maybe wheels/tyres, and any little extra detail I may wish to pump into a kit, plus decals if the scheme I want isn't covered.

 

Sales of these re-re-re-releases have been strong, and I'll bet there are plenty of these kits sitting in stashes all around the world just waiting for a prompt to bring them out to build. They are begging for a decent cockpit, and wheel wells, not to mention other extras that I'm sure would pull a dollar or two (or pound, peso, quid, etc) such as wheels/tyres, exhausts, gun bays, engines, etc etc.

 

They are current, so top of mind with modellers and are selling well. What has made them more attractive to the after-market now? Sales - resin, photo etch, 3-D printing, decals, white metal, you name it. It'll sell.

 

 

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7 hours ago, RZP said:

There’s always hope. ModelMonkey has released a number of beautiful resin sets to upgrade and correct the Airfix 1/24 scale Mustang over the last couple of years. He has started to do Spitfire parts, hopefully he could be convinced to do more.  
 

Richard

 

 

I have had private correspondence with two AM companies that have expressed interest in doing detail sets for these kits. Let's hope others see the opportunity too.

 

And let's hope that the interest translates into product. :) 

Edited by Peter Roberts
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34 minutes ago, Peter Roberts said:

Sales of these re-re-re-releases have been strong

How strong?  I'd love to see your numbers, and they would help people in the decal market understand what market they are catering for.

I just think it's pretty revealing that in 50 years of the 1/24 Spitfire I there has never been a single aftermarket decal sheet produced for it, as far as I can see. The decal aftermarket has been a mainstream feature in UK modelling for at least 40 years, but no-one's ever found it worth doing, and there's never been any barrier except for cost versus anticipated return.

 

Edited by Work In Progress
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13 hours ago, Work In Progress said:

How strong?  I'd love to see your numbers, and they would help people in the decal market understand what market they are catering for.

I just think it's pretty revealing that in 50 years of the 1/24 Spitfire I there has never been a single aftermarket decal sheet produced for it, as far as I can see. The decal aftermarket has been a mainstream feature in UK modelling for at least 40 years, but no-one's ever found it worth doing, and there's never been any barrier except for cost versus anticipated return.

 

I wondered too, so while the coffee brews I just did a search at Hannants - 1/24, Spitfire, and you get 9 Montex mask sets for individual markings (various marks),  3 Aviaeology sets to be released, and a Free French Vb set from Berna. A quick search at Scalemates lists a plethora of older sets, presumably out of production, and  roughly a metric tonne of aftremarket detail parts. Well, some, anyway. I was suprised.

 

Paul.

Edited by Paul Thompson
Spelling failure.
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Aftermarket parts for the re-released 1/24 Airfix Mk.1 Spitfire

 

With what's currently available, the basic kit doesn't need to much more. You don't have to go as OTT as I did to get a decent model out of the 1/24 Spitfire (still in work 🙄).

 

To me the essentials are a new i/p - beautifully catered for by Airscale kit (get the new expensive one - ASPE24SPIT, much better than the old one) and some seat belts. I bought both the HGW and Eduard sets, but in the end plumped for the Eduard, a personal choice (but the choice is there!)

 

There are a few decal alternatives as Paul has found, though the Montex sets aren't really decals, they include some decals but are mostly masks. As for the Aviaeology sets, they've been 'forthcoming' for ages. I looked at their website and they were originally released a while back and contain much the same stencils as supplied with the kit. I wouldn't hold your breath. Anyway the Airfix decals will give you the basics - good roundels etc and are excellent quality.

 

So there's quite a bit of aftermarket already, but I wouldn't expect a deluge.

 

The main challenge which will face any modeller who fancies the 1/24 Spitfire Mk.1 will be putting it together without it looking like a dog's breakfast. It's good kit but now old and the fit of many of the parts leaves a lot to be desired. No amount of aftermarket is going to solve that.

 

Cheers,

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1 hour ago, Paul Thompson said:

I wundered too, so while the cofee brews I just did a search at Hannants - 1/24, Spitfire, and you get 9 Montex mask sets for individual markings (various marks),  3 Aviaeology sets to be released, and a Free French Vb set from Berna. A quick search at Scalemates lists a plethora of older sets, presumably out of production, and  roughly a metric tonne of aftremarket detail parts. Well, some, anyway. I was suprised.

 

So, as I said, there are literally no 1/24 Spitfire I decals apart from the Airfix kit sheets, of which I have many examples . From the 2010 release onwards I have found the Airfix sheets to be of good quality and I bought a few 2010 sets direct from Airfix when they were available as spares. My 1970 - 2005 sets are all pretty deficient, mostly out or register and/or blurrily printed. 

 

Masks are fine for some markings and some modellers, but most kit buyers aren't up for that, and you can't mask the stencils in any case.

 

It is possibly a unique situation in 1/24 that there have been more aftermarket decals for Hurricanes than for Spitfires. It's always been the other way round in 1/32, 1/48 or 1/72.

Edited by Work In Progress
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On 12/15/2020 at 8:32 PM, Work In Progress said:

How strong?  I'd love to see your numbers, and they would help people in the decal market understand what market they are catering for.

I just think it's pretty revealing that in 50 years of the 1/24 Spitfire I there has never been a single aftermarket decal sheet produced for it, as far as I can see. The decal aftermarket has been a mainstream feature in UK modelling for at least 40 years, but no-one's ever found it worth doing, and there's never been any barrier except for cost versus anticipated return.

 

 

Not strictly related to the possibility or not of new Spitfire 1/24 sheets, but it's worth mentioning that there is one thing that has changed in these 40 years in the aftermarket decal world: the minimum number of sheets that printers used to request has become lower and today it is possible to have much smaller runs. This has allowed a number of new brands to offer very niche subjects that could not be viable 20 years ago. Of course the result of a smaller print run is that the cost per sheet tends to be higher.

This may also mean that if it's now possible to offer decal sheets with smaller print runs and still nobody offers sheets for this kit, maybe there really is very little interest in making them,.,..,

 

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As I see it:

1. Not many people buy 1/24 kits,

2. Even fewer buy previously released 1/24 kits

3. Only a small number of these are interested in aftermarket items or different decals

4. Only a small number of these are likely to agree on a subject.

Therefore the likely market for such a thing is miniscule.

 

If there was any kit that could beat the argument, then it would be the Airfix Spitfire.  That even this hasn't, rather demonstrates its basic truth.

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1 minute ago, Graham Boak said:

As I see it:

1. Not many people buy 1/24 kits,

2. Even fewer buy previously released 1/24 kits

3. Only a small number of these are interested in aftermarket items or different decals

4. Only a small number of these are likely to agree on a subject.

Therefore the likely market for such a thing is miniscule.

 

If there was any kit that could beat the argument, then it would be the Airfix Spitfire.  That even this hasn't, rather demonstrates its basic truth.

Also possibly 5 (no time to check back to see if anyone else said it, but they probably did) even if the numbers for no. 3  were larger, how many people have space for more than one Spitfire Mk1 in this scale? Even unbuilt and stashed they take up a lot of space...........

 

Paul.

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9 hours ago, Graham Boak said:

As I see it:

1. Not many people buy 1/24 kits,

2. Even fewer buy previously released 1/24 kits

3. Only a small number of these are interested in aftermarket items or different decals

4. Only a small number of these are likely to agree on a subject.

Therefore the likely market for such a thing is miniscule.

 

If there was any kit that could beat the argument, then it would be the Airfix Spitfire.  That even this hasn't, rather demonstrates its basic truth.

I'll suggest that 'numbers' of those who buy 1/24 kits (especially Spitfires) don't build but gift them.  A wonderful present to receive, and for the donor, easy to wrap.

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My 1/24th Spitfire is being gifted to me.... I'll get it a week today! 

 

I've already got the key aftermarket  parts to improve the cockpit:

1 Seat and frame

2.Seat belts

3.Control Column and throttle box

4. Instrument panel. 

 

I'll build it using one of the two transfer options in the box, 610 Squadron, DW K. with pre ware colours. 

The engine will remain invisible: I toyed with motorizing it, but decided against it. 

 

Compared with the Hellcat I've just finished it looks really simple...and may be the better for it! 

 

I'll do a Work in Progress, I think! 

 

 

 

 

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Looking forward to it Peter. 

I treated myself to the Airscale IP and a set of Montex masks that WIP suggested earlier in the thread. 

I'm not sure if I shall get the resin seat but the joystick looks much better than the kit part. 

Please begin ASAP so that I can crib your ideas. 

Cheers.

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Well I now have it....🤩

 

First inspection shows that other than some fine flash on one spru it is cleanly moulded, not bad for tools made in 1970! 

It will clean up easily. 

 

As well as improving the cockpit as mentioned previously all that needs to be done is to detail the wheel wells, not a very big job. 

 

I plan to close up the gun bay doors and engine panels, to make them worth displaying a lot of work would be needed, so this will be "ready for flight"! 

 

Not sure when this will be done, when the Harrier FGR 3 and my "What If" Grumman Tomcat F14 FGR 3 

 are finished I have the Revell 1/32nd Hawker Hunter, started in 1999, to finish, completing all my "long term projects!"

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