Airfix Kits

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....because I believe in many cases they are still using the exact same moulds from our childhood to make the parts. Obviously the detail wears off with repeated use.

Interesting how all the forum medics are coming out of the model making closet.

The worn out mould problem applies to vinyl recordings too ...

This model making craze for me is a result of lots of time on my hands since retirement.

Well, 1 new kit and a load of little tins of pain arrived this morning. Provoked a frown from SWMBO. The rest of the kits I ordered should arrive while she's in hospital (going in tomorrow for knee replacement) so I should get them hidden away before she notices them.

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Originally posted by Dungassin:
... and a load of little tins of pain arrived this morning.

Will that be the pain when SWMBO finds out just how many kits you have ordered?

I should not mock, my typing is dreadful.

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Originally posted by Derek Wright:
medics and Plastic kits - well it is a good a way to practice as any other <g>

I only did it so I could sniff the glue

quote:

Originally posted by Dungassin:
Well, 1 new kit and a load of little tins of pain arrived this morning. Provoked a frown from SWMBO. The rest of the kits I ordered should arrive while she's in hospital (going in tomorrow for knee replacement) so I should get them hidden away before she notices them.

There's a couple of decent looking model shops in Salisbury... ;-)

Phil

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Originally posted by Rockingdoc:

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Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
. Airfix kits are pants now BTW.
]

....because I believe in many cases they are still using the exact same moulds from our childhood to make the parts. Obviously the detail wears off with repeated use.

It's not just a question of needing to re-tool. In truth, some of the moulds weren't up to much anyway. I was surprised to learn that some of the moulds were already almost 30 years old [especially some of those Series 0 and 1 models like the Spitfire IX and Golden hind] by the time I started making Airfix models in the very late '60s, as a impatient youngester who couldn't wait for daddy to get home... Originally sold in bags and re-packaged and re-packaged. Some are STILL going strong!!



However, some of the second generation kits onwards were really quite ok and are still in the range.

But it was the period inaugurated by the 1/24th Spitfire, Hurricane, Me109E and P51D in the mid-'70s that the moulding and detailing quality really started to become really quite good. HMS Belfast, 1/72nd Mosquito, 1/32nd Rommels' halftrack, Multipose and 54mm Napoleonic figures, etc.

Airfix were, as I recall, always better quality than the basic Revell range, but in the heyday of model making as modellers got older and more discerning they wanted better quality, Airfix had to compete with the likes of Tamiya, Hasegawa, and Historex for 54mm (1/32) Napoleonics, which totally eclipsed them.

Even Matchbox produced some more attractive pocketmoney models - not so much the aircraft, which had very heavily engraved lines, but the tanks and other military vehicles which came with attractive diorama bases - which all nibbled away at Airfix's crown.

Airfix went through a number of take-overs, and of course were almost lost altogether during the '90s. One take-over included merger with the French Heller brand, and so a number of kits new to the Airfix range were simply re-packaged Heller.

But somehow or other Airfix has managed to stick in there. I think those wonderful box paintings by Roy Cross really helped. Tamiya, Hasegawa, and Historex (don't know what happened to them) were always rather more expensive, Matchbox folded. For sheer quality at Airfix type price, Academy really is the business, but of course Airfix is the brand name known by people like me (us) the James May and older generations, who are wanting to introduce children and grandchildren to modelling, or rekindle a simple and constructive pleasure.

Well done James May!! And what I really liked was that the youngsters (about 11/12?) to whom he handed out kits to do in class and at home, who'd never made them before, made a pretty good job of it; and - a real advance - the girls seemed to enjoy it as much as the boys, even tanks and stuff.

Anyone spot any old faves out of these??


I particularly enjoyed the Douglas Devastator and Brewster Buffalo. What a geek am I??!!!

In TV dramas it is one of those cliches that Ikea flat pack furniture is impossible to put together, like binoculars have a double circle.

That just can not be true as it is a very successful business.

I do wonder though, if building Airfix and similar kits from the same sort of 'exploded' diagrams is good training for youngsters so that when they get their first home they can merrily 'flat pack away' to a relatively inexpensive but comfortable place to live.

I have always found putting them together pretty straight forward to assemble, only a few bit reversed now and then, but mostly quickly solved.

"No I am not getting our son into bad habits, I getting him ready to have a lovely home for when we visit in fifteen years time."

There used to be a wonderful bloke in your trade called Mat Irvine, who was one of the top model makers for BBC Special Effects. His scratch-builts to illustrate the Viking Lander and stuff were great, but I really loved the fantasy models for Blakes7 spaceships, and the close-ups in which you could have great fun trying to identify parts from Airfix kits! I recall that superstructure parts from battleships seemed particularly useful to the professional modelmaker.

I was lucky enough to work for 'Dereck Medding's Magic Camera Company' many years ago. At the time they were making and shooting the physical models for 'Lost in Space'. Dreadful film, but great models.

There was a 17 foot model of the ship they discover adrift in space. It was incredibly detailed. Despite being 17 foot long, it had details etched into brass circuit boards and then the brass lifted and pasted on to the surface.

There was also a less detailed model of the same, which I was fortunate enough to see blown up. Three Oxford Scientific Photosonic cameras running at around 360 frames a second, one down a track at 35Mph, triggering 80 explosives inside it, by means of manual triggers/contacts at the side of the track. When it went it was very quick, but watching it back you could see each of the explosions go off one by one.

We also did some CGI stuff on it too, my showreel starts with the first bad guy's fighter to get blown up. Dreadful film though.

No doubt some who worked with Mat Irvine worked with Dereck Meddings too in those days. The model makers in film have such fantastic skills, and then it is usually blown up at the end of it all, or worse, just dumped in a skip.

My favourite Airfix kit was the Angel Interceptor from Captain Scarlet

had that one too - crashed and burned into my parents vegetable garden while stuffed full of potassium permanganate

happy days

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There's a couple of decent looking model shops in Salisbury... ;-)

Is that where you go to buy supermodels?

Bit far to just drop in for a quick browse ...

hi - fi obsessive, train sets, airfix kits.
It's all part of the same psychological disorder.
And why has no one yet mentioned my contribution - slot car racing?

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And why has no one yet mentioned my contribution - slot car racing?

We formed a club and built our own 4 lane 105 ft track. Hand crafted chassis,inline, side winder and angle winder.
always loved the "newbie" who bought his fastest Scalextric car and was dumbfounded to find out just how slow they were.

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And why has no one yet mentioned my contribution - slot car racing?

My eldest daughter's husband is already muttering about buying a Scalextric for their son, and he's only 2 ...

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Originally posted by Dungassin:

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There's a couple of decent looking model shops in Salisbury... ;-)

Is that where you go to buy supermodels?

Bit far to just drop in for a quick browse ...

...just giving you more reasons to get down here on a factory tour.

Phil

Just read the local paper, some arsehole has fired 3 huts in the local forest recreation area a local thespian group, the slot car club and the model railway club.
I know the slot car track/club is at least 40 years old and the new fixed layout at the rail club is over 10 years old, apparently all total losses.

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...just giving you more reasons to get down here on a factory tour.

I'd love to do that, but SWMBO would find it boring. Unless you have an entertainment room where you can stash bored wives?

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I'd love to do that, but SWMBO would find it boring.

Not mine she has enjoyed both times we have done the tour.

Just to show what can be achieved:



steve

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Just to show what can be achieved:

John or Ellie (both 2) would demolish that lot in about 30 seconds ...

Very nice model, BTW.

One of my favourite model rail layouts. Saw it at the Manchester show last year.

That looks to me like a bloody good layout - the photo looks incredibly realistic IMO. Which layout is it? Is it 4mm? Haven't been to a model railway exhibition in ages but every time I do I am always left amazed by what can be achieved. It's a shame I am too hamfisted to be able to pull something like that off myself

That's amazing. I think the sense of reality comes from the lighting. It looks like a genuine British day.

EM_Gauge society
The layout is Shenstone Road, but connects to Wibdenshaw, where they modeled a junction that was planned, but never built. They took maps of the actual landscape, and the existing part of the railway, and built what was planned in the 1930's, fitting it into the actual real surroundings. I did pick the best photo. The windows tend to give away model trains, so when they are not front on they look thick, and clear plastic looks very different to glass.

Link to very high image of the track plan, set into an actual map of the area.

It is 4mm (1:76), but EM gauge, where they have widened the tracks and wheels of the models to correctly show the track gauge as the scale should be.

OO Gauge track is really US 3.5mm gauge track, 16mm, but should be 18mm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM_gauge

More photos (looks like the server is down right now though)

http://emgaugemodelslayouts.fo...net/c1194480_97.html

The above is one of the best photos, and the lighting is very important to make it look realistic. Either diffuse, or a single distant wide light are needed to give reality. Multiple light sources from different house lights, or cast from several windows make a lighting condition that would just not exist in reality.

Here is another still from the EM gauge societies Canada Road layout, which really shows good lighting.