Incomplete Review - Revell 1:110 TIE Fighter (06734)

Scale: 1:110, RRP - £5.99 (or £12.99 including paints, glue and brushes)

With the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, being released I decided to get into things with a quick and easy build. This was a bit of an impulse buy, I was in my local hobby store when the first batch had just arrived and the owner let me have one before they were even out of the shelves.

I've had fairly strong opinions on Revell and their Star Wars range but I was more than prepared to give them a fair chance here. I really wanted this kit to be a good one.

So to the kit, I was a bit hasty in getting started so I actually forgot to photograph the sprues so I'll direct you to Britmodeller's in-box review. The parts count is small, 22 in all but they do look reasonably detailed.

The wings, (for want of a better word), are both single pieces which was noticeable when compared to other kits in which the solar collector arrays are a single piece with a separate frame that attaches to them. I can see why because it's simpler for the novice builder, but if you want to airbrush them it'll involve a lot of masking as you spray the dark panels and then the grey coloured frames.

Up until now I've been avoiding the elephant in the room. That scale! 1:110. Just ignore this, especially if you wish to combine this with models from other ranges. This kit is actually bigger than the FineMolds kit and the Bandai kit both of which are 1:72 scale (and both of which scale up the same next to each other).

Now I appreciate that we're talking about the scale of fantasy vehicles and so with that in mind I measured up the pilots in all 3 kits. FineMolds and Bandai both were 1:72 scale, this kit was nearer to 1:50 scale. So why put a scale on it the first place? This seems very misleading if you're a modeller as really this is a toy kit. Looking a bit further at the history of this kit it then became apparent that this is actually Revell's 2012 Easykit Pocket TIE fighter, re-boxed and with the parts unpainted. Suddenly this looks like a rather lazy re-release just in time for the new film.

So how did it build? It goes together fairly well, in fact it's almost a push fit kit. The cockpit has a large hatch to the top which is meant to open to allow you to see inside (and see the oversized pilot). Again this seemed to emphasise the toy like nature of the kit.

Unfortunately this where my pride takes a bit of a knock. Due to the tight fit of the parts my dry fitting wasn't a thorough as it should have been and the hinge for the hatch ended up catching on the rear wall of the cockpit preventing the two halves from going together. How embarrassing...

So at that point there was only one place it was going, in the bin. I can't say I'm that bothered as I've already built the FineMolds kit and, despite the restrictions, I have one from Bandai to be getting on with.

I have to say when I saw all these kits in the store I though about getting a few other Star Wars models to quickly build. But with this experience I've changed my mind. I feel that there are much better options out there from Bandai and now, also, from Dragon who've just announced their new Star Wars range for 2016.

Dragon - Phase 1 Star Wars Releases

Overall Build Score: 2 out of 5, The detail is reasonable and a low number of parts makes it ideal for younger modellers. While it is relatively inexpensive it is essentially a repackaged Easykit Pocket TIE fighter from a few years ago without the pre-coloured parts. Combine this with very odd and completely wrong scale(s) make it feel like a somewhat lazy attempt at a cashing in on Star Wars as the new film is released.

The Airfix Revival Continues – 2016 Releases Announced

This morning I received an e-mail from Airfix. Normally I delete such e-mails without reading them but this was one I actually wanted to read as it contained details of their 2016 release schedule. I’ll get back to what they have planned for next year in a moment, but first I wanted to say something about how impressed I’ve been with Airfix as a brand in the last few years.

Airfix's 1:48 Defiant Box Art

Regular readers may recall the first ever build featured on this blog was an awful Airfix kit; in fact it’s still possibly the worst model I’ve ever attempted to build. I followed this up with a more current kit of theirs, the MiG 15 which showed some promise, but the space of less than 3 years even that looks somewhat dated. All these kits have since been dropped from their range, thankfully replaced by an increasing number of new and improved kits.

And that’s the thing, these are not re-boxed kits, these are brand new tools. Something which, in my opinion, has elevated Airfix far above the likes of their immediate competitors, companies like re-box specialists Revell.

It’s all a far cry from this time 10 years ago when Airfix went into administration; the turnaround has been fantastic, especially in the last few years. The investment in quality and the desire to progress, rather than rest on their past reputation is clear to see. Hopefully many more generations will get a chance to build that first Airfix Spitfire, just like I did all those years ago.

So onto the 2016 releases, there’s a good mix of WWI, WWII and Cold War aircraft. Although not my main area of interest the 1:72 scale Handley Page Victor looks like a bold release. However I’m looking forward to the end of 2016 when I hope to have my workbench clear ready for their B-17G (I had been trying to decide between Academy and Revell’s releases for some time but now I’ll wait).

B-17G CAD Image

Also, if time and hobby funds allow, I’m tempted by their JU-87 Stuka / Gloster Gladiator dogfight double release. I really like these double sets they’re well thought out and sensible way of bundling a couple of themed kits together. In fact I’ve recently bought one, (the Defiant / Do 17z set) but as I’ve not updated this blog in a while it’s only featured on my Instagram, along with another Airfix build that’s currently in progress.

So here's to the new and improved Airfix, long may they continue!

Completed Review - Tamiya Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (60756) - Part 2

Continuing from Part 1, let talk about decals. In fact, bear with me, I'm going to rave about a decal sheet. Yes really!

The decals in question are from Xtradecal, set X72187. I have never seen such a comprehensive set of decals with an equally comprehensive instruction sheet.


This particular set contains decals for a Spitfire Mark 5s only, there are a total of 12 options, from both the European and African theatres. As well as roundels and identification numbers there's a huge number of stencils and demarcation lines. I think, if you choose carefully, you can probably get five or six complete aircraft from this set.

Application was fairly straight forward although some of the long and very thin decals for the "don't walk" lines pushed my decal skills to the limit. It took me the best part of a week (in the evenings) to apply them, mostly, due to the number of them.

Now in previous builds this would be me about done, but with this build I'd decided it was time to raise my game. I wanted the panel lines to show and some weathering, especially as this was an aircraft in use and in flight.

After spraying the whole model with a gloss coat it was time to apply a wash. The wash I'd chosen was from Flory Models. After watching the tutorial video on their website, several times, I got stuck into the whole wash process. The actual moment of applying the wash is well captured in my Instgram post taken at the point where I was really wondering what I'd done.

However, it all turned out well and so the build was complete. For me it was most satisfying, the kit was excellent and I'd managed to move my modelling on to the next level. It's no competition winner but for me it marks a significant step forward. Take a look at the pictures below and see what you think.

With the final picture I'm reminded of something I'd forgot to previously mention. This kit doesn't allow for a "wheels up" option. The wheels you see actually come from an Airfix kit (the one I sacrificed as a paint tester) and they fitted perfectly.

And so onto the final matter of my score for this kit

Overall Build Score: 4.5 out of 5, another excellent Tamiya kit as to be expected. A good choice of variants exemplified by the 3 types of air filters and 2 canopies included in the box. If I had to pick a fault it's the lack of choice when it comes to portraying the aircraft in flight.

Build Review - Tamiya Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (60756) - Part 1

Time to get back on track with my aircraft building, where better to start than with another Tamiya kit. The kit, Tamiya's 1:72 Spitfire Mk.Vb/Mk.Vb Trop (kit number 60756) in a North African colour scheme.

Assembly, as so often it the case begins with the cockpit and the two halves of the fuselage. For a change I'd decided not to use a photo-etch set, this model was going to be in flight and so a pilot would be filling the cockpit space. Having said that I think the interior of the kit was reasonably well detailed as is, you can see from the picture below.

The out of the box interior

Cockpit & (Airfix) pilot

The pilot figure was taken from my spares box, in this case an Airfix pilot. Tamiya, for some reason, don't include pilot figures in their 1:72 kits (although this may have changed since their latest F-16 releases at this scale). I find this a little odd, as the 1:48 scale kits, of which some of the 1:72 scale kits are scaled down versions of, do contain pilot figures.

With the insides painted, using a home-brew interior green mix, it was time to assemble the two halves and the cockpit.

This was done by gluing the two halves together and pushing the cockpit assembly up through the bottom. This works well and prevents an uneven cockpit. By comparison I was building an older Airfix Spitfire at the same time. This model used the typical method of trying to glue a floor piece in-between the two halves and it sank leaving it uneven and consigning the model to being used for testing paint colours.

I decided that as this was a model in flight it would need to look used and so wanted to use the hairspray method of weathering and so selected areas were sprayed silver.

To be honest this didn't really work and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why. Not enough hairspray? Too much paint over the top? Either way, in the end only a small part of the wing roots weathered but it look OK. The rest was touched in using a Citadel silver paint.

On to the painting, starting with the underside. I used Vallejo's UK Azure (71.108) but felt that this was too blue. I over sprayed that with a 50/50 coat of UK Azure and Pale Blue Grey (71.046) and this seemed to be a better match.

I've written before about problems with the accuracy of Vallejo's colours and once again this proved to be an issue. I had bought the Vallejo RAF Desert colours box set and that was why I'd chosen a desert colour scheme. However the colour were, once again, not even close. I tried mix after mix with no success before giving up and deciding to use Tamiya paints. This for me wasn't a decision taken lightly as I'd had mixed success with Tamiya paints, finding them too watery, especially combined with my masking.


However my fears were unfounded, I managed to use them and use them well (for me). No paint leaked under my masks which was result! So Vallejo's loss is Tamiya's gain, in the future I won't be quite so afraid of using them.

Colours were straight from instruction sheet. Middle stone sprayed over the whole upper surface, this was a 1:1 mix of XF-59, Desert Yellow and XF-60, Dark Yellow. I then masked of the areas that were to retain this colour and over sprayed the Dark Earth colour. This too was a mix, 1:1 of XF-52, Flat Earth and XF-64 Red Brown.

With the painting done, the next step was the decals, which I'll write about next time.

I Never Thought I'd See The Day When...

This last weekend I decided to have one of those moments we all have when we suddenly realise the stash is getting a bit large and maybe something has to go. Naturally I thought this would involve a selection of "vintage" kits being put to one side ready to be listed on eBay. But something unexpected happened.

If you're a regular reader you'll know that I've not really had a bad word to say about Tamiya kits and to a certain extent that's still the case. But this weekend the unthinkable happened and one of my pristine Tamiya kits ended up on the "for sale" pile! The kit in question is Tamiya's 1:72 Messerschmitt Bf-109E-4/7.

Tamiya's Bf 109E-4/7 Trop

 
Sometime ago I wrote an in-box review of two Bf-109 kits, one from Airfix, the other from Zvezda. I didn't include the Tamiya kit because I figured it would be a forgone conclusion that it's a good kit. And that's the thing, it is. I'm sure it'll go together well, the three colour schemes are interesting  and the addition of three spinners is typical of Tamiya's attention to detail. OK so the fuselage shape is a few millimetres out, not noticeable to the naked eye, but that's forgiveable in my opinion.

Why is it going? Well it is better than Zvezda's offering, but the more I think about it, the more impressed I am with the Airfix kit. And it's not just their Bf-109, they just keep on delivering excellent kits with each round of releases. And when you also consider my first ever review (titled: "The Worst Kit You'll Ever Build?") was of an Airfix kit, I can't help but be impressed by the continual improvement from Airfix, so all credit to them. (Revell take note, it is possible to invest time and effort into producing high quality budget kits, rather than buying up other people's old kits).

So there you go, I never thought I see the day when I'd sell a Tamiya kit over an Airfix one.

Bandai and Star Wars - The Evil Empire Strikes Back?

There’s disappointing news for Star Wars fans outside of Japan.

If you follow my Instagram you’ll have seen I recently picked up one of the incredible kits from Bandai, in this case an excellent 1:72 scale Y-Wing. These kits are so good there has been huge worldwide demand for them. It was originally expected that such kits would be for the Japanese domestic market only but as we live in the time of the global economy naturally word got out and people from other countries started buying them. Why wouldn’t they when they’re the best kits they can get?

No that's not Coruscant...

Disney appear to have realised that this would probably have an impact on sales in other markets for which they have different, (and in my opinion, substandard), ranges and different agreements and so they’ve come down hard on Bandai and ordered them to ensure their distributors and re-sellers don’t offer them for sale outside of Japan. I'm sure they're completely within their legal rights to do so but the fact it's been allowed to go on for some time before they've pulled the plug is somewhat frustrating. Sadly this seems to be the way with some large corporations, especially American ones. They’re the first to want a free world market but when things don’t go their way they end up crying off to regulators, lawyers etc…

So what does that leave those us outside of Japan with? Well we get Revell’s frankly uninspiring offerings (although they may only be available in the US).

Disappointing...

At this point I should mention that Revell have made a statement that they had no involvement in Disney's decision. Interesting though that they mention they have no license to sell in Japan, it took me a minute to find their items for sale in Japan, but we'll overlook that for now...

The starter kits are well and good for those that are new to the hobby, something I've championed before. However the so called “Masters” range is actually a case of Revell doing what they do best, buying up old moulds and re-boxing them. In this case it’s the Fine Molds kits (one of which I once awarded 5 out of 5). Most of us would have been happy with that if something better hadn’t come along in the meantime. Plus they'll cost more than the Fine Molds kits ever did, for what is essentially old stock, the rumoured price of the "Masters" (Fine Molds) Falcon is in excess of $300!

However there are ways for us model builders to get hold of the Bandai kits, in the short term at least. First of all most Japanese sellers have been very good at communicating how (slowly) they’ll be taking stuff off their websites, so if you want something be quick (one informed me that I have until the 20th of September to buy any remaining stock or get any pre-orders in, which they’ll honour). Second, market sellers such as those on Amazon, eBay etc. will be selling them independently, although I expect prices will rise sharply one sellers realise they can profit. Once that happens there’s the third option, kit hunters based in Japan. In this case individuals living in Japan will buy kits and mail them to you, usually for a percentage fee (there’s a list here of some, but I can’t personally recommend any as I’ve not used them yet) which may turn out to be a better option than paying a premium on those for sale in option 2.

In my case my remaining hobby budget for the year has mostly been spent and I need to inform Iana that lots of parcels will be arriving in the mail from Japan in the near future (and my poor postman who has to carry them all)!

The sad part is this all seems so unnecessary, I was looking forward to seeing the new film in December but now there's a bitter taste about it all

Advanced Heroquest Reborn - The Heroes

I thought I'd kick off my Advanced Heroquest Reborn project by taking a look at the heroes that would be taking on the Skaven menace deep below the Old World.

Interestingly the box art featured the original set of heroes from Milton Bradley's Heroquest, along with the full set of monsters from the same game, the familiar zombie, scimitar wielding Orc and the shifty looking Goblin to name but a few. However beyond the box art and a set of character sheets they didn't really feature within Advanced Heroquest itself.

The Box art featuring the original adventurers - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

The game itself introduced a new group of heroes who featured heavily in the artwork and fiction of the rulebook. While they followed the common fantasy adventurer grouping of a human, dwarf, elf and wizard one noticeable change was the omission of the human barbarian for an armoured human soldier. They were named Heinrich Löwen (the fighter), Sven Hammerhelm (the Dwarf), Torallion Leafstar (the Elf) and Magnus the Bright (the wizard).

The "replacements" in action - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

The miniatures themselves were early Games Workshop plastics, at that time Citadel and Marauder miniatures tended to be of the lead variety. They were comparable to the plastic miniatures commonly found in table top games of today, fairly soft detail but enough to clearly reflect the characters in the game book artwork. Apparently they painted up well as shown in the picture below, although I have to confess I don't remember painting them myself when I owned a copy of Advanced Heroquest.

Miniatures; painted by Phil Lewis (image from Stuff of Legends)

These models still pop up on eBay on a fairly regular basis and I did originally think about buying myself a set. However common sense eventually prevailed and I decided not to play into the hands of profiteers and overpay for what are some old and fairly simple plastic models. In fact it was that decision that was pretty much the beginning of this project.

And with that mention of my project it leads us nicely onto my vision of the heroes. Taking the artwork and the original models I built up my first mock-ups of how I envisage Heinrich, Sven, Torallion and Magnus to be.

With the Elf, I'm really limited in parts and I'm honestly not sure if that's a male or female head on my figure! However one thing I wanted to do was to get rid of the highly impractical bow in one hand, sword in the other pose of the original figure. And yes, I know, you're probably thinking the dwarf, Sven, is not even close to the art work and so as I write this there's a head swap taking place.
 

Painting wise, I'm going to start with Heinrich the warrior. In my next Advanced Heroquest Reborn post I hope to go into a bit more detail about how I built and painted him.

Advanced Heroquest Reborn - A New Miniatures Project

I ended my recent post on the new Age of Sigmar release by reflecting on the Games Workshop's decision to end the past 30 or so years of lore by destroying the Old World in which Warhammer was set and replacing it with a brand new world.

"The new world concept will need time to grow on me, it is of course instantly lacking the rich history that the previously established world accumulated over many years, but I suppose if I don't like it then I know I can carry on playing the older games as their rules are readily available. I can even mix and match older and newer figures and lore as I see fit. And that's it, at the end of the day a hobby like this will always be what you want to make of it." 

The last line got me thinking about how I can make the hobby what I want it to be. I have a certain nostalgic fondness for the older era models and lore. This of course is tied in with when I started collecting miniatures. I started with Heroquest before moving onto Advanced Heroquest, Warhammer 4th Edition and then Warhammer Quest along with the accompanying fiction of the era like the Konrad trilogy (by David Ferring) and Beasts in Velvet (by Jack Yeovil / Kim Newman). This shaped a clearly defined world in my mind which has stuck with me ever since, even though later releases perhaps watered that world down somewhat (before finally destroying it).

Gone but not forgotten - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

Despite my liking of the older era lore I have mixed feeling about the older miniatures. Many purists will say you can only play these older games with old models, partly what I suspect is the driving force behind the somewhat overpriced "LOOK VINTAGE OOP CITADEL MINIATURES" sales that fill eBay week after week. Now while I do also have a fondness of some of the older models, some are, lets face it, not so great. And if I'm honest, I do think some of the newer models, yes including plastics, are an improvement on the older ones.

So with all that in mind I thought, why not use old and new models, to recreate something from the time of a rich and vibrant world, the Old World meets new. For me Heroquest was my first thought, but as I still own a complete copy I thought I'd move on to the next stage and recreate Advanced Heroquest (which I sadly no longer own and won't unless I part with the best part of £100).

So what is Advanced Heroquest Reborn? It's going to be my re-imagining of a classic game using modern models (although the odd classic will probably sneak in somewhere).

I want it to stay as true to the source as possible and looking through the rulebook there is a wealth of background images to draw on. My first thought, after reading the rulebook for the first time in a long time, was that it has a certain rawness and brutality about it which was lost in favour of a more polished world later on. This is something that really stands out today and something which makes it more appealing to me as an adult.

The "old" Old World in all it's savage glory - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

Some of you may remember a post I wrote a long time ago where I contemplated building character models from the Warhammer 40K world. That never took off because first of all because I always felt more connected to the Warhammer world rather than the 40K world, and second, because I just didn't have the knowledge of the 40K range or enough spare parts to start with compared to Warhammer. So, as projects go, it's still somewhat ambitious for me but I do feel better prepared and more connected to the subject matter this time round.

Advanced Heroquest contained 36 figures, 20 of which were Skaven and me and Skaven have never got on due to my inability to paint them so that in itself will be a bit of challenge. It's also why I'm going to start my next Advanced Heroquest Reborn post by looking at the heroes.

What's On The Workbench? #5

What's on my workbench?

I was thinking about these posts and realised that at any given time there's something on my workbench so I could write nothing but "What's On The Workbench" posts. Some things work out, others are put to one side, many never even feature in my blog posts.

With that in mind I've decided to take a different approach to sharing what I'm working on. For a start, this'll be the last of these posts as a more visual approach helps me share what I'm doing. So from now on I'll be using Instagram to post pictures of what I'm working on. Just click the What's On The Workbench Instagram button in the side-bar and you'll be able to see what I'm working on.

So here's a final picture, head over to Instagram to see more.

The Age of Sigmar Is Upon Us

After months of speculation the Age of Sigmar is finally upon us, this being the Games Workshop’s latest fantasy battle game, replacing the long-standing Warhammer Fantasy Battle, now in it's 8th edition.

As I tend to write about models and miniatures I am of course going to start by looking at the new miniatures, which I got to see at my local store. There are currently two factions of new miniatures both of which will be released with starter set next weekend.

First up are the Stormcast Eternals, these are an entirely new faction, representing the forces of order. The models looked very good and the plastic looks to be finer and more detailed than the current models within the fantasy range. However they are not really to my personal taste, I felt they’re essentially fantasy Space Marines and I’ve never been a fan of Space Marines, they're just too bland and have little depth beyond being big and crushing all that stands in their way.

Even so Space Marines are the Games Workshop's best sellers, which probably says a lot about their target demographic, and so I can see exactly why they've suddenly appeared in the fantasy setting.

Next we have the forces of chaos represented by the Khorne Bloodbound, one of the original chaos powers from the previous Warhammer. In that respect they’re nothing particularly new but again there’s a new set of figures, chaos warriors and marauders. These again are excellent and look finer and are more detailed sculpts than previous models.

The older chaos warriors and marauders have been around for some time now. In my opinion they’re a welcome overhaul these older figures (especially the marauders) in the range and when I first saw them I actually contemplated collecting chaos again! It'll be interesting to see if, going forward, there's an update for the other chaos powers.

As for the game itself the onus seems to be on simpler rules, just pick up whatever figures you have and start playing. As I have a bias toward miniatures I think this in itself is a good thing. For a long time I felt there has been too much focus on army lists, powerful units and characters and not enough on collecting the miniatures (or themes) that you want to collect. Want a small skirmish battle? That’s fine; want a huge battle? That's also fine.

Do these change go too far in the direction of simple? After reading the rules I'm still undecided. While few could disagree that Warhammer had become somewhat bloated the omission of things like rank bonus and psychology from older versions of Warhammer initially seem to suggest it's a bit too simple but until I play I can't be sure.

On the point of skirmish battles I can't help but feel that they regret ending Mordheim. As a skirmish game goes, if it was still around, it could have been used as an entry point to Warhammer and we wouldn't be where we are now. It's like they've realised the Warhammer of old required a lot of time and financial investment before you could even field a force on the table which was probably putting a lot of people off. Their solution, merge a skirmish and battle game into one product because the skirmish game that previously could have fulfilled that transition has long been gone.

Of course if you’ve spent any time on the internet this weekend you will have no doubt seen a lot of complaining! There seems to be a rather vocal criticism of the the game as being far too simple and of course complaining that “power-gaming” army lists are no longer valid. Personally I get the feeling the more vocal complainers, at least around the latter point, are the type of players that try hard to win a game with an army list rather than on the table top. These people are one of reasons why I lost interest in the gaming side of things some time ago. Despite all the criticism I have to say seeing this game for the first time this weekend actually had me contemplating gaming again!

From talking to my local store staff I get the impression that there’s been an acknowledgement that they needed make collecting and gaming fun again. If the Games Workshop want to take the increased fun approach as well then I really do think that they should be commended for this approach.

Something I think a lot of people have missed is that the Games Workshop realise they’re facing increasing competition from miniatures board games. Now it’s not uncommon to pick up a battle themed board game and so this seems like a logical step to bring those players into their fantasy gaming world. Should they have done that at the expense of their current Warhammer players? I think they had no choice as there certainly isn't room for both the Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Age of Sigmar. If the sales figures that are frequently mentioned for Warhammer, are to be believed, then from a business perspective it would have become unsustainable and we'd have eventually been left with no fantasy setting at all, just Warhammer 40K.

Of course this all comes at a cost, the destruction of the Old World, a world I've known for the past 25+ years. The new world concept will need time to grow on me, it is of course instantly lacking the rich history that the previously established world accumulated over many years, but I suppose if I don't like it then I know I can carry on playing the older games as their rules are readily available. I can even mix and match older and newer figures and lore as I see fit. And that's it, at the end of the day a hobby like this will always be what you want to make of it.

If you want to check out the new rules, then they are available for free here.

Completed Review - Hobby-Boss F9F-2 Panther - Part 2

Scale: 1:72, RRP - £11.99

It's been a while since I started this kit and to tell the truth it's also been a while since I finished it, I've just not got round to writing about it. In fact it's been so long I've forgotten most of the build process, so I'll keep this short.

Carrying on from where I left off, I seem to remember, the cockpit fitted well but it was essential to add some weight to the nose. However the odd part was the nose wheel assembly, it was required to fit this into the wheel well at an early stage which meant for the duration of the build you had to be very careful not to bend or break it.

As I recall the fit was really good, two halves went together and the wings fitted with no issues. The final step was to add the fuel tanks to the wings, again that was straight forward. The only issue was the cleaning up of the parts where they'd been attached to the sprues which I'd mentioned previously.

And now it time to begin painting, which took a couple of attempts as I was having my usual issues with Tamiya paints, in this case XF-17 (Navy Sea Blue) which was the main colour for this aircraft. Of course this no reflection on the kit, just my lack of experience using Tamiya paints.

Now the next part I do remember well, the decals. They were good quality, I don't think I had any major issues getting them on the model. However the big issue with them is that in my opinion they're not to scale! I compared photos, other kits and even the decal guide contained in this kit and I can confidently say they're oversized. This was especially apparent on the nose where it was quite difficult to squeeze them into the available space.

Once the decals were on I could add the under wing ordnance and this was another strong point of the kit . There was plenty to choose from, although I think if you added all the bombs you'd probably have an aircraft that would struggle to take off!

With that in mind I opted for a mix of bombs and rockets and it was done.


I have say that really liked this kit. For me it was a good introduction to Cold War era jets and the kit combined with the Eduard photo-etch made a very nice model that went together well. Pity about those decals...

Overall Build Score: 3.5 out of 5, an extremely nice kit, full of detail but let down by the oversized decals.

Vintage Kit Build #2 - A Back to Basics Bank Holiday Build

As the somewhat long winded title suggests, the recent bank holiday weekend has have given me time to build something new, or more accurately, something old.

A while ago I was given a box full of old model kits. Most of them could be classed as "vintage." Many had missing parts, almost all had no decals and so I'd put them to one side and had not really thought about building them.

So this weekend I decided to pick one out. Airfix's 1:72 scale Hawker Hurricane Mk I/IIB, a series 2 kit (02042), The plastic dates from 1979 and this particular boxing, I believe, is from 1990. Although the box was slightly crushed, everything appeared to be there, apart from the decals which were beyond use. This wouldn't be a problem as I had a suitable decal set, for a Mk I, to replace them with.

As for the approach to this build, I decided to keep it simple, closer to how I'd have built a model during a childhood bank holiday weekend.

The kit itself is typical of the time, raised details, next to no interior. With this in mind I decided to build it in flight, with the pilot seated, to fill the otherwise empty cockpit.

Of course less detail, less parts, less to worry about when putting it all together. The only real issue was the propeller, it was a simple piece of plastic fitted between the two halves and was a bit wobbly when moved. Certainly no Tamiya poly cap here, but it's all part of the charm.

Once assembled I moved onto the painting. I was going for an early war green and brown (rather than the late war grey on the box art). I this is where I had a bit of an ulterior motive for this build, I want to try two things. First, to try spraying a two colour camouflage scheme for the first time. Second, to see how accurate the colours were in Vallejo's Model Air RAF day fighter paint set.

Starting with the undersides I used Vallejo Grey (71.103 - RLM 84). I then moved onto the topside, spraying the whole area with the Dark Earth (71.029). Overall I was pleased, these two colours looked fairly accurate and of course sprayed easily. A quick matt varnish coat was added, again Vallejo  and then I masked the model with Blu-tack and masking tape ready for the topside green.

Here things went a little awry. I used, after following the colour sheet advice, US Dark Green (71.016 - RLM 73, no really...!) and I was thinking, it looked a little brownish. Against better judgement I removed all the masking to find next to no difference between the green and brown.

(I apologise  for the lack of photos at this point, it's a bit wordy for a while but stay with me)

Of course at this point I re-masked and resprayed.... OK, so no, I didn't. In the spirit of the old-school childhood build approach I was going for I found a better green and brush painted over the green that was closer to brown. And I actually ended up with a much better match, result! Which green I hear you ask? Russian Green (71.017), although I should add that the colour I got obviously was achieved over painting US Dark green base so I'm not sure how accurate it'll be straight out.

Surprisingly with a flat brush, the finish on an older kit with raised details is non too shabby if I do say so myself.

That just left the decals. As mentioned I had a set of spares. They came from Plastic Planet Club's Allied Fighters in the Battle for Greece set which cost me about £4 (discounted, they should be about £7) and contains decals for a single version of four different RAF aircraft (a Hurricane, Gladiator, Blenheim and Beaufighter)

An OK little set for the price I paid, full price, I'm not so sure. The decals had a habit of curling up and needed a fair bit of persuading before they'd settle down.

Anyway, after that rather lengthy post, here's the final pictures.

A rather tidy build all things considered, and you know what? I had fun doing it, which is how it should be!