delide

For those who are interested to see inside of the intake, there is a video of the test build nacelle on youtube:

What are you talking about, what is "clearly misleading"?? That the engine nacelles are not properly aligned and the lower/academy ones are not fully assembled?? That may lead to wrong conclusion that the lower ones are too short, or the upper ones are too long?? Anyway, it is just a photo comparison, anyone can draw their own conclusions, the misalignment could be just an unfortunate mistake, no?? What is the problem. If you don't want to buy then don't buy, who cares?? To me the photos mainly shows the different shapes of the nacelle pylons, one is just much better than the other

Thanks for the information. It must be difficult with so many changes. Though I guess their development speed were also not the fastest, now they also have to deal with Zvzeda. Never mind Trumpeter, they are like having their research automated indeed. Missed the CEO of Eduard explaining the cost of rivets. I could imagine that with EDM process, the raised rivets would need to be added afterwards to the finished molds and therefore more expensive. I'm not going to complain. But I can see that many might just go for the Zvezda kit now because of the rivet details.

Never used rivet decals, I can't image it would be easier than dealing with existing raised rivets. Just the alignment could be a pain, to get everything perfectly straight and parallel, a time consuming task never the less. Not a good idea from AMK I think, especially if they can't get their planned professional version released any time soon? Good to see AMK take the time to modify the tooling, the tail boom and fuselage intersection certainly looks so much better than in 2019. Funny how everything used to be raised in the past, engraved details used to be the challenge, Nowadays

Thanks for the comparison, especially the photo for the real part! Not sure what Zvezda was thinking there, that looks like a toilette😆 They probably did not waste any time to check the real part there. AMK is almost there, but... Personally I could live with both, as once the rotor head is installed, it will be largely covered. At first I find the seam line on the Zvezda part annoying, but when I look at the real thing, the seam or edges of the parts are even more prominent. Interestingly on the real thing parts at the rear(right side in the photo), the starboard side overlaps the

Ha, yes, I guess it's rare to have access to the real thing and a crane at the same time. Just found those photos on scalemodels, it looks like the Zvzeda one is not wrong either. Very interesting to know, but man, why does it has to be different... Looking forward to more comparisons.

Can't find it on that site. Honestly the bottom/intersection of the AMK housing looks almost same as Zvezda, but the rest look much narrower, could be just different housing indeed. This area is difficult to judge for me at least, as there is not a lot photo of it.

Interesting, that does look misshapen. But the comparison make it looks worse, as the arrows have been placed at rather difference places. The red arrows on the Zvezda build have been placed at the bottom of the housing, the black arrows on the real thing are placed higher. Here is the photo from AMK's part. The bottom/intersection is similar and transits to thinner shape at the top, the black line is roughly where the black arrows are placed on the photo of the real thing.

I guess it's for switching it open or closed, if we don't glue the canopy. For the canopy in open position there must be support parts, which could then be plugged into the openings at the front(can be seen in the fuselage part).

Yes, the details look amazing, looks to be the best from their 1/48 kits by far, or even the best from all. Also the shape looks perfect, every things that all the other manufacturers got wrong in any scale, they got it right, it's like they had blue print or reverse engineered the thing... There are new build up photos, it looks perfect, https://www.tamiyausa.com/blog/new-images-lockheed-martin-f-35a-lightning-ii-model-kit/

§30 is a great deal. But to be fair, Meng kit is developed like 5 years ago, where everything is cheaper. Nowadays their new tool kits aren't cheap either, their new 1/35 Chieftain costs about 70EUR. Prices for all kits have risen. And Meng's F-35A certainly looks very much like it, but there many shape issues, for example the fuselage wing transition area if anyone is interested, it's totally flat, on the real thing it's curved like the Tamiya above here.

It's certainly a Tamiya new tool, the test build really looks spot on, it is the only one so far that has picked up the strangely different angles of the pylons , among many other shape issues that previous kits all have got wrong: wing fuselage transition, very slight curved spine/top fuselage instead of perfectly straight, nose side profile... it all looks right here. OK, it's official now.

The colors appear to be quite different due to different camera and lighting, so it's difficult. When putting the colors of the fan deck side by side, the contrast does appear to be stronger too, maybe indeed closer. But the chips do not look all that bad, in fact when put together in the upper left corner, the difference in contrast compared to fan is not that great. Anyway, color from different photos are unrealiabe and can not be compared, my points is just that we can get different impression of contrast. And I have no real thing to compare at all, but just from the technology

I don't like to say it, but I think there's a bit of optical illusion here 🙂 The soft edges of the camo weakens the contrast a bit. I draw 2 "paint chips" here on the photo, the contrast on my monitor is not that weak? Certainly stronger than it appears on the photo of the fan deck. Not sure how fan decks are printed, my understanding is that printing base on CMYK can reproduce even less colors than digital photos/displays(RGB model), so I would prefer actual paint chips.

Indeed, someone basically give it away, with the contest still a week to go, Raymond may not be amused.

Interesting. But such variations must be more of exceptions than rules? Otherwise what the FS is for, the whole standard is a total waste of time then. I'd probably ignore the exceptions, but I'm no expert about such things at all, it's interesting for me to read about it. Squadron markings are different, they are usually small and colorful, the colors are so much stronger, so errors are less noticeable I think.

Errr... it's not about squadron decorations, it's about low vis color scheme. RichardL is right, if decal manufacturers won't just design their decals base on some home depot colors, it will help to make it looks right and also get the contrast right for the stencil decals, then one can fade, weather, change colors of everything together. If stencils already disappeared, then there is no way to fix it.

I totally agree. Reference photos just do not help much, unless one likes and wants to replicate how it looks on particular photos. Also IMO things like highlight, fading, etc. often just make models looks like models, but that's just me. Anyway, whoever thinks it's a waste of time, not the way to enjoy the hobby or whatever, they can always try to ignore it. There can be many ways to approach the hobby. What is right for you may not be right for others.

Wow, all clear canopy parts are slide molded! Also a first in phantom kits, just to replicate that tiny bit of omega shape and the rivets details on the frames I guess. Anyway, shapewise this is going to be the perfect kit again. Edit: OK, academy ones are silde molded too, but not ZM.

Hobbyboss MV-22 only 60$??? Where? From what I've seen, in terms of details there is just no comparison, the details of the MV-22 is no better than Hasegawa's 1/72, especially the tilt rotor mechanism is worse, basically not there. Yes, I will buy two Minibase kits too, one for build and one for looking at :-)

Yes, the outside and lower edges are fairly thick and rounded, but the top and inner edges are quite sharp, must has some thing to do with aerodynamics. http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/michael_block/fa-18e_165898/images/fa-18e_165898_04_of_20.jpg

On a test shot the intake doesn't look good unfortunately, the top and inner edges could be done sharper. One could try to thin it, but that will leave visible wedges. Maybe the production version will be different.

Indeed, I just realised that the exhaust should be rounded, while the edge of the exhaust looks OK, the facets can be seen on the side. Not interested in the cart at all, but the wheels look funny with those polygons/facets.

Yes, but I bought the original some months ago... The AMK metal gear has a small detail that is not correct though, probably a compromise of the manufacturing, the printed one should be better.

Looks like it's already in sale in China, for 688 RMB or almost 90 EUR. Hope the printed parts would be available separately.