What's your earliest memories of Airfix?

First kit I ever had was the BAC1-11. My Mum put it together for me one rainy afternoon when I was about 7 (think was the first and last airliner kit I’v had). First model I built myself was the Me262 (horrible light blue plastic) and then it was everything….Series 1 in the little bubble packs, the Dogfight Double collections (Spitfire and Me110, Mosquito and 262, Mig-15 and Mirage III) and many many more.

Once saved up all my pocket money for the Hercules (think was £2.10) and only built the Bloodhound Missile and Landrover as the kit had two left hand fuselage sides and didnt have the patience to send off for a right one.

Then took up flying the real thing and lost all interest. Am now starting to build the odd one and now trying to start a collection off of some of the types I’ve managed to fly in. Can’t take in now the cost of it all. Bought the new T-6G Texan (which is the old Heller one reboxed) and that cost me £6.99. In the old days, that was 22p.

I remember the day when you could…..

Best wishes,

Martin

My earliest memories of airfix were rows and rows of plastic bags hanging up on racks in my local model shop at 2/- (10p) each. It was always Woolworths that had the latest kits in before anyone else.

I fear I remember what must have been the launch. Two bob poly-bagged with header card Spitfire and one other.

Later I remember the racks with rows of kits displayed, often the first you would know of a new kit was when it appeared on the rack. Great excitement, could I find the two bob for the new Whirlwind?

Then Airfix moved on to big kits. Frank Cross was richer than me and could afford the first 7/6d Lancaster.

I had to scrape my money together for the 6/- Wellington.

Glue all over your fingers, and the transparencies. The rush to finish the kit quickly, the disappointment when it was finished and looked pretty horrid. Put the transfers on then, when you could afford the paint, paint round them 😮

Moggy

My first memory is trying to assemble the Kingfisher model they did/do still? I must have spent hours trying to put it together and eventualy gave up and left the main float off.

[QUOTE=
So many choices….who else remembers the old folded paper “narrative” type instruction leaflets. “Glue the radio set into the fuselage….” etc. Long before those often less than helpful “international” instruction leaflets that came along later.
Paul F[/QUOTE]

Not only did they show tell you how to assemble the kit, they also encouraged you to learn about the real aircraft parts; I remember asking my Dad, “But what is a DF loop?” I used to love all those operating parts on the early Airfix kits, but they were murder sometimes to get right, trying to assemble the two fuselage halves with maybe 3 turrets, rudder, nosewheel doors and bomb bay doors all having to be in just the right place.

The Airfix MkIX Spitfire. My Dad had dug the Spit he had built as a lad out of a box where it had been since him and my Mum moved into that house. The undercart was broken off and it was covered in dust. I was totally captivated. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I had heard people talking about Spitfires before but had no inkling what they really were – at that age I only had indistinct ideas of what aeroplanes were, but from then on I was a commited aviation-phile.

I bought the same kit recently. I’m well aware of the panning this kit gets from the model mafia, and I know it’s the wrong shape, and that it’s clunky and the fit is poor compared to modern efforts, and that you can get a better and cheaper model elsewhere, but it’s not the same. The Airfix MkIX Spitfire is one of the clearest pre school memories I have, and started me off on a path I have been on ever since. It made me interested in history, it led me to learn about the brave men who defended this country while they ‘danced the skies on laughter silvered wings’. It gave me something other than television to be fascinated with. It helped create the person I am now (for better or worse!). It will be a sad day for me when the kit is finally deleted and the moulds pensioned off.

My First Airfix memories..

Watching my dad build the (first?)Airfix 1/72 Bf 109, and having to decide whether to fit the European or tropical-style air filter.

Then helping him build the 1/72 Auster Antarctic – and agonising over whether to fit it with wheels, floats or skis, as the kit came with all three options. Opted for skis….. Many many years later after various repaints and much abuse the kit was consigned to the dustbin.

So many choices….who else remembers the old folded paper “narrative” type instruction leaflets. “Glue the radio set into the fuselage….” etc. Long before those often less than helpful “international” instruction leaflets that came along later.

My first 1/144 Skyking was the Boeing 707 (BOAC Colours), followed by a Vickers Vanguard (BEA colours) and then the 747 (BOAC Colours G-BOAC) – what a drag it was punching all those window holes into the decal stripes with those fiddly little hole punches!

My early efforst also sufferred the usual glue-smeared canopies, glue-shrunken joints and dodgy anhedral angles, plus broken/crooked decals and bent undercarriages, aerials and prop blades. Oh, and propellors which were either so tight they didn’t turn, or so loose they hung limply out of the fuselage/nacelles…

Fun days, too little time to build them nowadays, it’s easier to buy the ready finished Corgi Aviation Archive Diecasts, though it’s not quite the same not having built them yourself 🙁

Paul F

Dogfight Doubles-from Woolies. Spit and me 110!

Which is still available! 😉

The Airfix Spitfire MkI was issued in its original format in either 2003 or 04 – blue plastic, with slightly(!) inaccurate decals and the codes BT-K. You can still get it on eBay, probably Hannants, too.

My earliest memories of airfix were rows and rows of plastic bags hanging up on racks in my local model shop at 2/- (10p) each.

I remember the plastic baggies! I think the more expensive models were in boxes, those were beyond us. I think all the plastic was white at that time and you had little capsules of paint? The earliest kit that I can remember making was the SR.53 and an Auster. 🙂

Must have a million memories connected to Airfix, but hard to say where they begin. I used to go shopping with my Dad on Saturday mornings in the Sixties, and every week dear old Woollies seemed to have at least one new Airfix release in. By “new” I mean a completely new kit, not a re-hash or re-release. I probably averaged a Series One kit every week or a Series Two every fortnight; a Series 3 or 4 was a rare treat, and anything above was usually just a dream for Christmas or my birthday. Didn’t see the point in those fiddly biplanes, and the tanks and warships always seemed so much smaller than expected. Got confused over the Seahawk & Skyhawk, and didn’t understand how there could be two DH Comets and two Westland Whirlwinds, but then everyone knew the S-55 as just “The Helicopter” anyway because it was the only one in the range then. Usually made them up in a single sitting, to a backdrop of Sunday Night at the London Palladium (you older UK guys will remember that) Loads of Britfix glue on canopies and furniture, drooping tailplanes, dodgy undercarriages and upside down transfers (no one called them decals then)

Back in those days when I couldn’t really afford books, magazines or air shows and there was no such thing as the Internet, videos or DVDs anyway, Airfix kits were my main window on aviation and my chief source of information; used to paste every box top and history into a rainbow scrap book from the GPO (still can’t bear to chuck them out) So much so, that as a very young lad I thought kits must be made in separate 1/72nd scale and 1/144th ranges because the real aircraft were also somehow fundamentally different and incompatible. Couldn’t quite believe it when I saw a real Comet and a Lightning together; think I turned horrified to my Dad and said “But that one’s a Skyking….”

At the time, my first Airfix catalogue probably felt as exciting as my first girlie mag many years later (really not as sad as it sounds). All those kits to tick off, promises to others that I’d get around to buying them some day, and tucked in among the old friends, tantalizing box tops of some new plane I’d never even heard of, but suddenly couldn’t bear waiting for. Now I have a large collection (roughly 2,000 of various makes) and can afford virtually any kit, but it still doesn’t even come close to standing at Woollies counter agonizing over the tough old Beaufighter I’d been looking forward to all week or the smart shiny new Bassett.

Dogfight Doubles-from Woolies. Spit and me 110!

My first Airfix memory was of my Dad building the 1/72 Spitfire VB, loved the box art on that little beauty. RF D will always be an interesting aircraft for me, of 303 (Polish) squadron

Oooh, tough one, but I think it must have been at least fifteen years ago, getting a boxed-set for Christmas. It contained a Spitfire VB, Harrier, Hunter and one other (I think). My grandad and I spent the next four or five nights putting them together, although I made a right mess of the painting! 🙁 Still, at the time I was right proud that I’d managed to put the flipping thing together! 😉

I also had the big Spit VB, and my grandad built that. One thing that annoyed me later in life was that I realised the paint colours were reversed, kinda like the paint scheme currently carried by Spitfire NH188 in Canada! :rolleyes: