Robertson

Why not try the far better Hasegawa FW-190s? Granted, the right wingroot is an inch thinner than the left, while the right wingtip is about the same thicker, but somehow I don't think this is what discourages people... Taking the measurement of the Me-109's wingspan without considering the dihedral would add a few inches, but nowhere near the actual 14" the Eduard kit added. I don't think the wingtip shape is such a big problem on the Eduard kit: The rest of the wing is...: The editorial is not clear what they will actualy do, because the problem is so immense it is nearly unmannag

Yes, and it just boggles the mind what they did... Even the Wikipedia entry has the wingspan correctly spelled out... I doubt the aircraft they measured had wings like these: More likely it was just a typo that was never checked... Can't wait for the Vector/Zvezda G-6 conversion... Quite right about now knowing who the real reviewers are... In a way I think this disaster was long in the making: For each Great Wall Mig 29 and Eduard Spitfire Mk IX/Mig-21s, how many Great Wall P-61s, Azur Ki-48s, Eduard FW-190A/Fs, Tamiya Il-2s, Airfix Spitfire XIIs? Except for Airfix maybe, you never get

Yeah! That will bring more kids into this hobby... I don't remember when I was a kid anyone telling me not to buid those huge Monogram kits, and to go instead for something cheaper and shoddier... R.

I'm afraid this is true. This was made clear to me in the 1/53 scale Tamiya Il-2 canopy issue, when I happened to get the kit before he did. Comparing to the previous (3% too large) Accurate Miniature canopy, the 11% too small Tamiya canopy looked quite absurd (% from the flying Il-2 at FHC), and yet Brett vowed to make a comparison right away... I kept wondering, how would he handle this thorny problem?: To be fair, he did mention in his text that there was a difference in canopy size, for which he then went on to speculate (wrongly and without any basis) that this could have been an i

So 6 mm total in upper surface appearance, without the fuselage, with 1.4 mm extra within the fuselage itself. Cockpit opening shoud be 13 mm wide: How wide is it on the Eduard, outside skin to outside skin? In any case, This kit has now officially fallen off the chart in ridiculousness. Even Tamiya's 1/53 scale Il-2 canopy seems tame in comparison... And with the rudder nearly five inches too long, no, it isn't "Proportional" to 1/46 scale... This is going to be one of the few 1/48th WWII releases of the year, and this is what we get... Pretty much sums up why I've mostly turned t

I'm calling you out on this garbage: Link to some examples please... You claim hundreds, I wonder if you can even find one... In ten years of looking at many forums, I remember four notable put downs, three of which related to colour, not the model: -1 One involving a sort-of fictional color scheme of a Ki-44, 2-another for a heavy wash in the panel lines of a P-40, leading to a huge argumentative thread, and a third (by the same guy complaining in #1), who ridiculed the weathering on an unpainted in-factory C6N Saiun... I think the same guy was involved in all three, and not one was related t

Yeah, I think this guy in a dimension where all painfully plain and obvious observations must be ignored until backed by utterly serious scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo... As for why the pathetic nose and tail shape are not discussed, don't assume that the most discussed issues, like the wingroot bumps, are what really matters. Usually the most heat is generated by the easiest to fix and least important issues... It's always like that, don't ask me why... And no, you don't have to get the finally released mouldings to judge them, because unless all you care about are tiny lumps and bump

And who pays me for that work? I thought the idea was I pay them to do their work... R.

Nose fixed? Where did you see that they fixed this horrible lower nose? (Not that this is the only thing wrong with its outlines): Exactly what I think. This it seems is what modelling has become... I'd say if this hobby is all about painting, get an actual canvas... Robertson

Actually if you look closely at the hull, they moulded-in a very undernourished de-gaussing cable with NO brackets, and this actually gets in the way of using the photo-etch. I hate photo-etch degaussing cables: It think moulded-in looks far better and more three dimensional, so I fully share in your sentiment. The hull joints on this kits are crazy and designed so that you wil never fully be able to remove them. That is the worst thing about this kit. Nice kit but not as good as their Mogamis, which also miss the degaussing cable! Robertson

You are of course right. But dammed if it will ever sink in... Robertson

Yes, but that is precisely not what I a talking about. Plastic aircraft kits are more mediocre in general outlines compared to armor kits, and definitely worse than more recent ship models. They, in particular, often make no effort to reproduce correctly the geometry of the wings, almost all of them having wingtips that are way too thick, this just being an average example out of far worse out there: Hasegawa's Hurricane is worse than the above, and the new Italeri Hurricane is much worse still. I have seen class-winning Hurricanes, done by world-class modellers, where the top surfa

I no longer have any interest in the actual plastic. What we have seen so far from Eduard's Me-109G-6 is way, way too mediocre for that. The past in winged things is indeed far from exemplary, and in this I agree with you... I don't know why this is so bad for aircrafts in particular. But look at Xu-Ton's incoming Il-4, and take my word it will be nearly perfect in every way... Surely now Xu-Ton doesn't have more history and sophistication than Eduard? Is the Il-4 an easier aircraft to research than the Me-109? No, but they used help from fans... Eduard could have at least used the Zvezda

Well "looking good." is all relative I suppose... This is a quick list, with a few items added by others in other sites: -Angle of the leading edge of the fin way too sloped. -Tailplane leading edge root too far back from fin leading edge. (Really obvious, yet I missed it until someone pointed it out) -Tailplanes look a bit low (unclear because of the inaccuracies of the fin leading edge). -Hopelessly flat rear belly. -No "step" behind engine openable cowl: Universal to all kits. Not a big deal, but obvious: It was a big rubber seal trapped between the fuselage and the engine p

Yes, but still keeping the tail's end close to the correct height somehow... If you look at the canopy's forward depth below the top ouline of the nose, you'll see the kit's front canopy is really much more deeply seated into the nose than on the real aircraft: This is where the canopy's extra height comes from at the rear, which allows that deep spine curve, and yet keeps the tail's extremity at a plausible height (though it could still be too low)... This does imply that the nose is too deep at the windshield level, which it certainly appears to be (hard to say with the gondolas)...

I think there is more to the spine than just the spine...: Note that the excess of spine curve on the top is apparently matched by a lack of belly curve on the tail's bottom. This does not necessarily mean the tail extremity is too low overall, as it could also mean the cockpit area is too tall in its upper contours. It also looks like the leading edge of the fin is too sharply angled backwards, and this may give the impression the tailplane is set too low on the fin, but this last point could very well not be just an impression... Again, the Zvezda F has absolutely none of thes

Eduard's Spitfire Mk IX still has the shape of the wheel bay wrong ("droopy" instead of oval). Compare with Airfix P.R. XIX wheel bays, which kit is probaby even more perfect than Eduard despite its 0.7 mm too small diameter spinner: Cockpit width at the sill on all Spitfires should be 12.5 mm (600 mm outside skin to outside skin) and the Eduard is at 12 mm: Airfix got it near dead on at around 12.5. (A Me-109 shoud be 13 mm (625 mm) and Hasegawa was around 14, in case you are still considering keeping the previous Gustav) These errors however do not mean the Eduard Spitfire IX is anything

That was my initial impression as well, when Hal Marshman Sr. first mentionned the spine. But if one uses their previous Me-109E as an example of a pattern that might have been repeated here, it looks like the whole rear canopy joint, and even the canopy height, could all be involved, and thus more than just sanding would be required: The above image looks strikingly familiar compared to the initial impression of the G-6. I have the growing impression something even remotely like the feat of their Spitfire MK IX will not be repeated this time around... At least we can still hope for

It is the profile front-back of the spine that is in question, not the right-left cross-section. Newly published side views of the sprues are, unfortunately, not convincing either: They confirm the excessive curvature of the spine profile, if you look right at the sprue attachment point area, and past the text trying to obscure the rest... I fear there is more going on as the diagonal rear canopy outline seems extremely tall...: There is still the incoming Zvezda Me-109G: That one at least will settle the issue once and for all. Even so, as soon as the Eduard kit comes out, anyone will

I agree, but hopefully it is just an adjusted/forced CAD perspective, or something that has been corrected since... And for those who think that there are too many of those, just consider that the last "state of the art" Gustav attempt is a quater century old, and that the Gustav is 70%+ of the entire Me-109 production... Robertson

The FW-190 windshield was 480 mm by 245 mm, this from a relic measured in Hungary by Peter Kormos (matches Hasegawa exactly). Both Eduard and Tamiya got the width wrong by 20% or 50 mm: Their kits would have you believe the width is at 300 mm or more, which is pretty bad for a simple flat rectangle that determines the whole canopy shape... Airfix made a similar error for their Spitfire MK XII's windscreen, but this time by getting the angled sides too wide, which I failed to correct in my kit, one of the putty convered ones I supposedly never built... A flat rectangle is kind of more obvious t

Eduard's Yak-3 has been vastly, vastly superceeded by the new Zvezda, which is similar in price. R.

Their recent Spitfire Mk IXs are awesome and nearly flawless, minus 0.5 mm too narrow cockpits and the slightly off wheel well shape. I used to think their I-16s were great, but then found out their cockpit is 2 mm too far forward or back (can't remember which)... Pretty bad on such a short length... Their WWII kits are also not that great, their FW-190As being by far the worst out there in accuracy, with 20% too wide windscreens like the Tamiyas... The 190A cowls are cylindrical like the current new-built Fluegwerke 1:1 kits, something no other 190 kit ever got wrong... Their Me-108s, w

Considering Brett Green, nothing about him could be more true... When he saw how different in size the AM Il-2 canopy was to the Tamiya kit, he posted a "comparison" photo where each canopy was on a separate split image! (The AM canopy was about 13% bigger, but only 3% too big to actual: You could see nothing of that in his "comparison", and it was on purpose) He then went on into a completely fictional (and embarrassing) speculation that the Il-2 might have had two different size canopies, despite ample evidence to the contrary (which he worked to conceal with the above subterfuge)... I u

It looks way, way better than their Tu-2. Just superb. Robertson