Airfix Spitfire Vb 1/48 NEW tool

[dragonlance]

There is one price for the rest of the world and another for the US.

You're not so special. There are only the Czech price and the jacked-up rest of the world price.

Plus the inflated shipping.

Vedran

[Otto]

I have bee through this before about Eduard kits. I get the eduard e-flyers which you can sighn up for. They advertize the kits for a given price. If someone logs on from ,let's say Denmark, there is a streight price conversion. If you put the kit in your basket and log on from the US the kit jumps up by 20-25% and sometimes more. Unfortunately overtrees are only available through Eduard and to get them any other way it would have to be through a private party. Also yes Eduard almost doubles the shipping costs. I do buy from European retailers (discounters) but it is the principal of the thing. I just hate supporting a cruck. I am myself Czech and know Sultz personaly, I just dont like the business practices. eduard will milk a kit for everything it's worth plus 50% when it comes to US customers.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Otto

[andrewj]

Just measured the Airfix Vb and Mk XII cockpits , the MkXII is no more than 1mm wider or 1.8 inches in full size. Stand them side by side and it's not noticeable. Apart from the slightly deep fuselage under the cockpit area , everthing else on the XII is in proportion and it builds into a very nice model , better than the SH MkXII in my opinion.Certainly not flawed enough to condemn it.

Give me several tubes of filler and I'll make you a Spitfire, that much filler and you won't need a kit.

Andrew

[Otto]

Just measured the Airfix Vb and Mk XII cockpits , the MkXII is no more than 1mm wider or 1.8 inches in full size. Stand them side by side and it's not noticeable. Apart from the slightly deep fuselage under the cockpit area , everthing else on the XII is in proportion and it builds into a very nice model , better than the SH MkXII in my opinion.Certainly not flawed enough to condemn it.

Give me several tubes of filler and I'll make you a Spitfire, that much filler and you won't need a kit.

Andrew

The wing is also placed incorrectly. Place thefuselages on top of each other and you will notice that the wing is too far back.

As Far as the Eduard kit is conserned I did buy one fro a European store for $24 for the full kit not the weekend kit. No more about Eduard please. OK now anyone know if the Special Hobby Mk.XII is any better than the Airfix kit?I had their Mk.?? and it was nothing more than a copy of the Hasegawa kit. Tail was way too short and the wing was in the wrong position.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Otto

[Jonathan Mock]

I have bee through this before about Eduard kits. I get the eduard e-flyers which you can sighn up for. They advertize the kits for a given price. If someone logs on from ,let's say Denmark, there is a streight price conversion. If you put the kit in your basket and log on from the US the kit jumps up by 20-25% and sometimes more. Unfortunately overtrees are only available through Eduard and to get them any other way it would have to be through a private party. Also yes Eduard almost doubles the shipping costs. I do buy from European retailers (discounters) but it is the principal of the thing. I just hate supporting a cruck. I am myself Czech and know Sultz personaly, I just dont like the business practices. eduard will milk a kit for everything it's worth plus 50% when it comes to US customers.

Shop around and remove the chip from your shoulder.

[chek]

I'm planning to mate the Airfix Mk XII nose to a 1980s era Airfix Mk V rear fuselage.

They seem to fit together reasonably well, although I'd use the new Mk V kit given the choice (slightly less re-scribing).

But then I 'standardised' on the old Airfix Vb as the best available at the time for consistency of shape in 1/48 and still have a few to use up.

Luckily they don't howl 'error' beside the Airfix XIX (and its Mk XIV derivatives) and the Eduard Mk IXs and XVIs.

Strangely, I've not built any early ones in that scale - the indispensable Mks I and V yet, so maybe the new Airfix will fill the gaps that Tamiya's Mk I & V didn't.

Not knocking Tamiya - I have four of their 1/32 scale VIIIs, IXs and XVIs and they're pretty much top of the game at present.

Edited August 14, 2014 by chek

[Jonathan Mock]

Spencer Pollard called it a "Basket of curate's eggs"...

Actually, and in the interests of accuracy, I don't think he did.

[andrewj]

OK now anyone know if the Special Hobby Mk.XII is any better than the Airfix kit?

SH Mk XII is worse than the Airfix one , fuselage too short , as are all of SH's Spifires , wing wrongly placed, wing poorly shaped, and not nearly as nice to build. There is a fix for the SH Spitfires , but its easier to build an Airfix one.

SH fuselage fix,

This cures the length problem and position of the wing , but you still have the inaccurate wing shape ,which problems seem to be inherited from the Tamiya kits.

Andrew

[Otto]

WOW That is fantastic. Thanks for letting us know about the SH kit. I knew that about the Mk.5 since I had one and sold it on ebay just because of that reason. I will now have 4 of the new Airfix Mk.Vs so I will graft the AF Mk.XII nose on one of those. With a Hasegawa "c" wing should be the ticket. I kept a bunch of the Hasi kits just for the wings. I have also seen the Tami wings reshaped quite easily.

[Robertson]

Just measured the Airfix Vb and Mk XII cockpits , the MkXII is no more than 1mm wider or 1.8 inches in full size. Stand them side by side and it's not noticeable. Apart from the slightly deep fuselage under the cockpit area , everthing else on the XII is in proportion and it builds into a very nice model , better than the SH MkXII in my opinion.Certainly not flawed enough to condemn it.

Give me several tubes of filler and I'll make you a Spitfire, that much filler and you won't need a kit.

Andrew

Well, I'm the one who corrected the kit (minus trailing edge position/cockpit width) so I'm the one who knows, right?

The Airfix Mk XII cockpit opening is 13.71 mm wide skin to skin. Actual cockpit width is exactly 600 mm skin to skin, so 12.5 mm exactly in 1/48: So it is 1.21 mm wider than it should be, which works out to a 10% error or 1/43.2 scale. Let me tell you, if you think a major item like the cockpit width is acceptable at 1/43 on a 1/48th kit, then you must not be disappointed with many kits out there :)/>...

And for the record (in reply to Jonathan Mock), yes Spencer Pollard did call the ICM Spitfire Mk IX kit a "basket of curate eggs", in print, in an editorial of "Military in Scale" (probably not in the lead editorial but another one deeper inside), prior to June 2011 but long after the kit came out (this is not in his initial review of the kit). You can ask him about it yourself: spencerpollard1@gmail.com

I initially thought he was being unfair to the ICM kit (by assuming a pejorative meaning to the phrase, since at the time I had no precise idea what the expression meant), but then I saw those wheel wells, and especially the gear spacing, and I realized he just knew the kit (and real Spitfires) much better than I did...

Robertson

Edited August 18, 2014 by Robertson

[andrewj]

Well, I'm the one who corrected the kit (minus trailing edge position/cockpit width) so I'm the one who knows, right?

The Airfix Mk XII cockpit opening is 13.71 mm wide skin to skin. Actual cockpit width is exactly 600 mm skin to skin, so 12.5 mm exactly in 1/48: So it is 1.21 mm wider than it should be, which works out to a 10% error or 1/43.2 scale. Let me tell you, if you think a major item like the cockpit width is acceptable at 1/43 on a 1/48th kit, then you must not be disappointed with many kits out there :)/>/>...

And for the record (in reply to Jonathan Mock), yes Spencer Pollard did call the ICM Spitfire Mk IX kit a "basket of curate eggs", in print, in an editorial of "Military in Scale" (probably not in the lead editorial but another one deeper inside), prior to June 2011 but long after the kit came out (this is not in his initial review of the kit). You can ask him about it yourself: spencerpollard1@gmail.com

I initially thought he was being unfair to the ICM kit (by assuming a pejorative meaning to the phrase, since at the time I had no precise idea what the expression meant), but then I saw those wheel wells, and especially the gear spacing, and I realized he just knew the kit (and real Spitfires) much better than I did...

Robertson

You corrected the Airfix Mk XII ? , by you own admission your so called corrected kit was still so flawed that you dumped it. I've been building Spitfire kits for over 50 years and I think I know which are the good ones and which are not.

Andrew

[Jonathan Mock]

Well, I'm the one who corrected the kit (minus trailing edge position/cockpit width) so I'm the one who knows, right?

Any chance of posting a 90 degree side on photo of your correction?

And for the record (in reply to Jonathan Mock), yes Spencer Pollard did call the ICM Spitfire Mk IX kit a "basket of curate eggs", in print, in an editorial of "Military in Scale" (probably not in the lead editorial but another one deeper inside), prior to June 2011 but long after the kit came out (this is not in his initial review of the kit). You can ask him about it yourself: spencerpollard1@gmail.com

I did, he says he doesn't remember saying that. Which issue was that exactly?

[Otto]

The truth of the matter is that EVERY ONE of these kits have their own mistakes. None of them are perfect. Some are closer to accurate than others I grant you. To some modelers they are ALL good enough and look like Spitfires when built. The main questions are than; Which mistakes are easily fixable? Which kits you enjoy building? What price are you willing to pay for which mistakes? Which mistakes bother you enough to even bother with fixing? Which do you have more of, time or money? The final point is; If you are a Spitfire builder and have a plethora of them on the shelf, which mistakes are obvious enough for not wanting that particular kit on the shelf amongst the others? I personally like about half of the Airfix kits but not the other half. I like the ICM kits because the mistakes are easy to fix, the detail is very good and I can get them for about $8. I like the Eduard kits and own a few only because I do have contacts and can indeed get them for less than most people even though they are still almost twice the price of the ICM kit. The last thing is that the subject is the NEW Airfix Mk.Vb kit which is one of Airfixes finer achievements in the Spitfire category and definitely worth the space on anyones shelf even built right out of the box. At this time I own four of them just as I do three of the PR.XIX kits. I also have about 20 of the ICM kits and counting. Other Airfix Spit kits about fifteen and Eduard kits four. Other brands about ten more. Will I buy more if others come out? U-betcha. What do I plan on doing with these kits, if I have the time to build them before I croke? Cut, Chop, Bash, Build what ever I have time for. After all, I don't think there was any other airplane made which had more variants than the Spit.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Otto

[Robertson]

Any chance of posting a 90 degree side on photo of your correction?

I did, he says he doesn't remember saying that. Which issue was that exactly?

As for my corrected Spitfire: Sure! Not sure what you want to prove with that, since the profile was a perfect match, but here are some profile pics of the corrected remnants vs the new accurate Airfix PR XIX... I think you forget the nose was re-deepened when it turned out too shallow: Some people periodically bring up my error when my nose became too shallow, and then they don't remember when I re-deepened it... How selective memory is, isn't it?:

Some of what it took to correct the profile: Tamiya Mk V tail used here to raise the tailplanes after shallowing up the fuselage made them too low (incidently, the Tamiya Mk V tail was way too small and had to be enlarged at the hinge)...

What the initial -long- saw cut did to the profile:

And with all that effort, this is how the new Airfix PR XIX matches my corrected Airfix Mk XII:

Funny, Airfix seems to have revised their research, since the newer kit is from the box and matches perfectly my two year ordeal with their previous Mk XII kit... With all the epic mountains of putty shown in the in-progress posts I posted on Aeroscale, one has to wonder if one could not be related to the other? :)/>

Note the dimensions on my kit's tail are from an actual Mk IX...

I get the slight impression you want to defend a kit Airfix themselves heavily revised in the subsequent variant they released (which has some common items, including the fuselage depth and nose cowling panel shape among other things...) Look at the nose, which apparently doesn't require a lot of putty, and ask yourself if you really want to dendend this kit?:

As for what Spencer Pollard said, I mentionned it on a June 2011 Hyperscale post, 3 years ago, and nobody in a wide audience then questionned that he did say it...

It was printed I am almost 100% sure in his own MIS (or at the very least in an interview of him in another UK modelling magazine), in any case it was in print, so generally you remember what you said in print I would think... And I also know very well it was him, not a contributor. I don't have the issue, but how failible memory is, isn't it? Expecially when using such a memorable expression!

Here is the thread where I first mentionned it, 3 years ago: It was soon after I had read it, and note nobody then contested he had said it...

http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/thread/1307812652

As for correcting the ICM spine, you keep hearing about it, and I for one would love to see an example done...

Robertson

[Otto]

Please correct me if i'm wrong, but the Mk.XII had a standard mk.VII/XIII/ Mk.IX (late) tail. Which would make the tail on the airfix Kk.XII a bit bogus also.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Otto

[Jonathan Mock]

As for my corrected Spitfire: Sure! Not sure what you want to prove with that, since the profile was a perfect match, but here are some profile pics of the corrected remnants vs the new accurate Airfix PR XIX... I think you forget the nose was re-deepened when it turned out too shallow: Some people periodically bring up my error when my nose became too shallow, and then they don't remember when I re-deepened it... How selective memory is, isn't it?

I really would not play the selective memory game, the odds would not be in your favour especially where Edgar Brooks and Roy Sutherland are concerned, two guys who have forgotten more about Spits than most people will ever learn.

You apparently redeepened the Spitfire XII nose much back to how deep it was in the first place and then compare that to XIX kit as being an example of your fix.

And you posted a link to something you posted under yet another non-de-plume (Gaston Marty/Sherwood/Robinson - tick where applicable) as proof someone else said something but you're not sure where and when they said. It only proves you said something, nothing more.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Jonathan Mock

[Robertson]

I did, he says he doesn't remember saying that. Which issue was that exactly?

Well if he says he doesn't remember saying the ICM Mk IX was a "basket of curate's eggs" (lovely nuance), I'll take that as an admission that he could have said it...

Now if he wants to go further and say that he definitely did not say it, then I'll look up MIS and and other mags from around 2010-11, and he will owe me publicly an appology for the stupid waste of time, is that fair enough?

Now let's see if he takes this up.

Robertson

[Otto]

At the time there was no better kit than the ICM so it was still the only good game in town in comparson. As I stated, the fixes are very easy and the kit is still worth building. If Airfix wants to release other accurate marks I will buy them. so junk the existing Mk.XII and come out with a new one that is accurate.

[andrewj]

Jonathon , what you must realise by now is that Mr Marty/Sherwood/Robertson has made a career out of comparing kits and rubbishing those he considers not to come up to his standards. Where his theories fall down is that he insists on comparing kits to each other and not to the full size aircraft. Others such as the previously mentioned Edgar Brooks , Roy Sutherland , etc take a great pride in their knowledge of the real thing.

For example Mr Robertson condemns the Airfix Spitfire XII for having a coxpit that is 3 inches too wide, but wider than what , another kit ? or the 1/48 scale original dimension ?.

A Spitfire in 1/48 scale should have a measurement of 13mm across the base of the windscreen, the new Airfix MkVb measures 13mm at this point as does the ICM MkIX, the old Airfix Vb was 13.5mm and the Airfix MkXII is 13.5mm, However the much vaunted Eduard MkIX only measures 12mm.

Mr Robertson condemns the Airfix Mk XII but as we can see it is 50% more accurate than the Eduard Kit.

Of course all this is meaningless because we all realise that any model is the sum of many parts not just one dimension in isolation . All these kits have their pluses and minuses , not one of them is perfect , and as most of them build into different Marks anyway we can easily build them all and not feel guilty about it.

Andrew

[Jonathan Mock]

Well if he says he doesn't remember saying the ICM Mk IX was a "basket of curate's eggs" (lovely nuance), I'll take that as an admission that he could have said it...

Now if he wants to go further and say that he definitely did not say it, then I'll look up MIS and and other mags from around 2010-11, and he will owe me publicly an appology for the stupid waste of time, is that fair enough?

Now let's see if he takes this up.

Robertson

"I'll take that as an admission that he could have said it...' - wow, that certainly explains your, erm, interesting method of interpreting photographs and seeing shapes that neither Roy or Edgar can see.

Tell you what Gaston/Robertson/Sherwood/insert name here, you go look it up. It'll settle the argument once and for all won't it?

Waste your time? Lorks a lordy, what do you think you've been doing with other people's all this while?

[Darius at home]

I have often wondered what Gaston/Marty/Robertson wants to be when he grows up.

Darius

[Jennings]

...and he will owe me publicly an appology for the stupid waste of time, is that fair enough?

e·go·tis·ti·cal ēgəˈtistikəl/

adjective

excessively conceited or absorbed in oneself; self-centered.

"he's selfish, egotistical, and arrogant"

synonyms: self-centered, selfish, egocentric, egomaniacal, self-interested, self-seeking, self-absorbed, narcissistic, vain, conceited, self-important; boastful

[randypandy831]

always getting off topic somehow.

[Otto]

Yes, please; can we get back on topic. Who cares what was said about a kit way back when which is not even the subject of the topic.

[randypandy831]

picked the kit up so I'm happy. can't beat the price. sold like hot cakes when LHS got their shipment.

looks like alleycat already made a Vc wing for this kit.

Edited August 29, 2014 by randypandy831