F-RSIN Comet I - was it at Telford?

[Dave Fleming]

Did Laurent have the kit available? Anyone get a look at it?

[bootneck]

Hi Dave,

Yes, they had a made up and painted model on their stand and it looked very nice. Sorry, I didn't take any photo's.

I did buy a very nice D.H Heron off them. There were choices of decals so I chose BEA red square.

cheers

Mike

[Pin]

I had a look at it, seemed very basic to me. Was hesitant to buy (and did not) as the price seemed a bit too high for the kit of such level of details.

[Dave Fleming]

How much was it?

[The wooksta V2.0]

One of the lads at wor club bought it. Think he said it was over £20 which I thought exhorbitant. Nice looking kit though.

[BAC]

I bought one. A Comet 1 in Air France colours. It was £23 which seemed a little high for what it was worth but it was about what I'd expected. Much cheaper than a resin version though, even a DH91 Albatross which is alot smaller was over £30 -so that stayed on the table.

I also got the Falcon 20 in Pan Am colours, which is added to my collection. That was £13, which is around the same price as a similar sized Welshmodels vac form.

[Dave Fleming]

23 isn't too bad, when you consider their resin wings were £15 and you needed an Airfix kit and a pack of milliput for that.

I can see at least one short term!!

[richellis]

I was tempted, and TBH £20 isnt bad for the kit.

Next year Ill take more money!

[Dave Fleming]

One asspect of the kit I'm interested in is the wing sweep - what's noticable about their resin wings is that the leading edge sweep is greater than the Airfix kit*, and I can't find anything on the Comet that says the 3/4 wing had less sweep - I suspec it's a legacy of using the Airfix wings as a basis for the conversion pieces, and adjusting the roots to have straight through jet pipes.

Unless someone knows different?

*With the conversion, you do have to carefully ine the wing root up to the fuselage, but even then the angle of sweep is greater than the donor kit.

[richellis]

I did a walkaround of the Comet 1 at cosford,

here

[Dave Fleming]

I did a walkaround of the Comet 1 at cosford,

here

Thanks Rich, that's useful - most of the pics I have of her are outdoors and have the intake covers on.

[arcadia modeler]

I've always wanted to build a Comet I and when the F-RSIN kit came out, I got one. Cost about US $40 in the states. It's a low-pressure injection molded kit made of very soft plastic. That part helped in fitting all the pieces together, being very easy to sand and trim. But it makes it difficult to use the smaller parts. The wheels and landing gear are, IMHO, unusable, and so I built my own. Even if you could clean them up, I doubt they could support the weight of the model. Now I have a nice undercarriage with rolling wheels, something I try to do on all my builds. I selected the BOAC model, and of course, choose G-ALYP for the registration. The decals are excellent. I also have the F-RSIN conversion kit for the Airfix Comet IV and someday I'll put that together and see how they compare.

Here is the finished model:

[little-cars]

Paul Davies stocks them in the UK, about £25 from memory. I was looking at the Comet and DC-7 at Bolton.

[marty_hopkirk]

One of the lads at wor club bought it. Think he said it was over £20 which I thought exhorbitant. Nice looking kit though.

This needs to be put in context. It's a one person business and every new kit comes with significant risk, it's low volume production and profit margins are modest.

Also, it's doubtful if a mainstream manufacturer is going to dip on this subject matter.

It's up to us as individual to make a call on best value, but the use of the word, exhorbitant suggest something else and I don't believe that's the case.

Marty...

[Dave Fleming]

One asspect of the kit I'm interested in is the wing sweep - what's noticable about their resin wings is that the leading edge sweep is greater than the Airfix kit*, and I can't find anything on the Comet that says the 3/4 wing had less sweep - I suspec it's a legacy of using the Airfix wings as a basis for the conversion pieces, and adjusting the roots to have straight through jet pipes.

Unless someone knows different?

*With the conversion, you do have to carefully ine the wing root up to the fuselage, but even then the angle of sweep is greater than the donor kit.

Just as a follow up, having finally got an F-RSIN kit, the wing sweep of the IJ moulded kit matches the Airfix one - so the resin wings are too swept. However, I have a plan for those!!

[richellis]

there is a review of this kit, and the Britannia in the aircraft review section