Dopey kit features - part 2

[lesthegringo]

Some years ago I posted a chat topic about how some kit manufacturers can come up with some startlingly stupid or ill conceived kit features - often on a model where the rest of the kit is a paragon of good fit and design. If I recall correctly the offenders I called out last time were the 1/48th Eduard F6-F drop tank, Academy F4 undercarriage and nose gear bay, and the Kittyhawk Su-22 nose cone.

 

Well I have another couple of additions to that list. I am currently building the ICM / Revell MiG-25, which in many ways is a stellar kit. However how is it that they have managed to come up with what has got to be the most absurd undercarriage leg to wheel attachment imaginable. Instead of a straight, round peg it is a little conical spike. That wouldn't be so bad if the mating surface in the wheel was a conical hole, but no, it is a circular opening that is not conical. As a result there is no positivity to the join, plus it is weak. Considering the sheer size of the beast, it's worse than useless. But just to make sure that the maximum pain is givn by this technique, they also used it on the tailplane fixings....grrrrrr

 

And I also have to point out the instrument panel, which is beautifully depicted by a clear styrene rear with proruding instrument bezel glass that goes through a perforated IP front panel. You then put the IP decal over the front of all this, effectively obscuring the IP 'glass', rendering that whole assembly method useless. Really?  

 

Les

[Neil.C]

1 hour ago, lesthegringo said:

Some years ago I posted a chat topic about how some kit manufacturers can come up with some startlingly stupid or ill conceived kit features - often on a model where the rest of the kit is a paragon of good fit and design. If I recall correctly the offenders I called out last time were the 1/48th Eduard F6-F drop tank, Academy F4 undercarriage and nose gear bay, and the Kittyhawk Su-22 nose cone.

 

Well I have another couple of additions to that list. I am currently building the ICM / Revell MiG-25, which in many ways is a stellar kit. However how is it that they have managed to come up with what has got to be the most absurd undercarriage leg to wheel attachment imaginable. Instead of a straight, round peg it is a little conical spike. That wouldn't be so bad if the mating surface in the wheel was a conical hole, but no, it is a circular opening that is not conical. As a result there is no positivity to the join, plus it is weak. Considering the sheer size of the beast, it's worse than useless. But just to make sure that the maximum pain is givn by this technique, they also used it on the tailplane fixings....grrrrrr

 

And I also have to point out the instrument panel, which is beautifully depicted by a clear styrene rear with proruding instrument bezel glass that goes through a perforated IP front panel. You then put the IP decal over the front of all this, effectively obscuring the IP 'glass', rendering that whole assembly method useless. Really?  

 

Les

 

To be honest I have found many undercarriages are spindly and poorly fitting on a variety of models.

 

Some I have ripped off entirely and made into flying versions! 😜

[Mike]

2 hours ago, lesthegringo said:

And I also have to point out the instrument panel, which is beautifully depicted by a clear styrene rear with proruding instrument bezel glass that goes through a perforated IP front panel. You then put the IP decal over the front of all this, effectively obscuring the IP 'glass', rendering that whole assembly method useless. Really? 

In a similar vein, the clear plastic instrument panel, with or without decals.  I've only seen one item of this type that has the decals printed backwards so it can be applied to the rear.  Give me 3D printed IPs any day.

 

The other one is any parts that are then closed away forever when closing your model up, with no means of opening the kit up to expose them without serious plastic surgery.  Chinese companies seem particularly prone to doing this, maybe thinking that a higher parts count makes for a more appealing kit?  I've never even looked at the part count before buying a kit, so that didn't work - on me at least

[IanC]

3 hours ago, Neil.C said:

 

To be honest I have found many undercarriages are spindly and poorly fitting on a variety of models.

 

Some I have ripped off entirely and made into flying versions! 😜

 

I love how Tamiya has done it on their newish Bf 109G-6 and Spitfire Mk 1. The most ingenious and well engineered design I've come across. 

 

Sorry to go off on a positive tangent, Les. 😁

[Bertie McBoatface]

3 hours ago, Mike said:

In a similar vein, the clear plastic instrument panel, with or without decals.  I've only seen one item of this type that has the decals printed backwards so it can be applied to the rear.  Give me 3D printed IPs any day.

 

The other one is any parts that are then closed away forever when closing your model up, with no means of opening the kit up to expose them without serious plastic surgery.  Chinese companies seem particularly prone to doing this, maybe thinking that a higher parts count makes for a more appealing kit?  I've never even looked at the part count before buying a kit, so that didn't work - on me at least

 

Cutaway Mike, cutaway!

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 hours ago, lesthegringo said:

little conical spike.

 

The latest Tamiya F-4 had that system which, as the wheel also had a conical hole, worked very well.

[pigsty]

Sprue gates that are half-blocked by part numbers or other bits of sprue, so you can't approach them with anything capable of cutting them.

Sprue gates that are half an inch long and an eighth of an inch thick, so nothing you have in your tool box will cut them.

Tiny little locating pins, no length to them, and not enough of them either.

PE parts with fifteen gates.  Or it could have been more - I gave up counting.

Carefully flatted wheels that have round locating pins so you still have to line them up with a bit of card, or whatever you use.  What was the point of going to all that effort with the flats?

Track links that don't match the pitch of the sprocket.

Stiff vinyl tracks that won't be deterred by the rest of the model from forming a perfect circle.  Even better when they come in two lengths per side.

Handed individual-link tracks made in two shades of grey that you can just about tell apart, but only if your light is bright enough to melt them.

Vague instructions that amount to Oh, stick it in here somewhere, anywhere'll do.

 

I could go on ...

[lesthegringo]

Ah yes, Airfix EE Lightning for the 'just put it in there somewhere' approach to the undercariage parts.

 

And you reminded me - the headrests on the MiG-25 are flat on the rear, non-visible side and concave on the visible side that the pitots head goes into. So guess where they put the sprue gate...? And of course the curvature is such that the sprue nippers cannot get in.

 

As for thick sprue gates, the Kinetic F-16 has sprue gates thicker than the parts that they attach, and of course where they do most damage to the part when removing

 

Or aftermarket resin / PE / whatever items designed specifically for a certain kit that do not actually fit that particular kit

[upnorth]

Representing parts that are round or otherwise significantly 3D in nature with photoetch parts.

 

I've had kits where they represented landing gear actuators and other cylindrical items in PE and it's absolutely maddening. Bad enough I need to scrounge or scratchbuild a replacement part, but worse is that part of my money has gone to a kit that included a PE set where a percentage of space on that set was wasted with unusable parts!

[Neil.C]

23 hours ago, Mike said:

The other one is any parts that are then closed away forever when closing your model up, with no means of opening the kit up to expose them without serious plastic surgery.  Chinese companies seem particularly prone to doing this, maybe thinking that a higher parts count makes for a more appealing kit?  I've never even looked at the part count before buying a kit, so that didn't work - on me at least

 

I had that trouble on a Dragon 1/24 Spitfire VB.

I painted up all the guns and ammo in the wings nicely but when I added the covers they were such a tight fit I never saw the guns again!

 

Wish I'd never bothered. 🤣

[Moggy]

The MPM Gloster Meteor mk.4 Fuerza Aerea Argentina edition has a new wing - that doesn't match the fuselage. It is literally fuselage and wings from two different kits.

 

...and I have three such kits in my stash 🤪

 

Cheers, Moggy (but the decal sheet is great)

[IanC]

2 hours ago, Neil.C said:

 

I had that trouble on a Dragon 1/24 Spitfire VB.

I painted up all the guns and ammo in the wings nicely but when I added the covers they were such a tight fit I never saw the guns again!

 

Wish I'd never bothered. 🤣

 

Yes, but 'you know they're there', as the modelling saying goes.

 

Which is rubbish, really. 🤨

[Ray S]

What about the new-tooled Airfix 1/72 EE Lightnings, where you are asked to drill out the location pins for the refulelling probe if you want to have it on the model. The probe has square location pins...

 

Ray

[Mike]

2 minutes ago, Ray S said:

What about the new-tooled Airfix 1/72 EE Lightnings, where you are asked to drill out the location pins for the refulelling probe if you want to have it on the model. The probe has square location pins...

 

Ray

Drill square holes, silly!

[-Ian-]

Things went a little wrong on the stencil sheet of the otherwise excellent Eduard MiG-21 kit, there were a few stencils where the numbers came up short (i.e. where 4 duplicates of a particular stencil were needed but there were only 3 on the sheet), especially silly when there were actually an excess number of many of the other stencils.

Edited May 4, 2022 by -Ian-