XN923As all the current Warbird pilots will be too old to fly by then, and I will have bags of experience when its finished, I will be happy to fly the thing for you if you’re short of a pilot?? 😉 PM me or get Adrian to ring me (ok, ok, I wont hold my breath!! 😀 )
My dear fellow, I think you’ve got the wrong idea. You want to be starting to think of reasons why you are really not suitable to fly a Battle. In fact, if you give up flying now, your licence may not be current by the time it’s ready to fly. Unless you are desperate to fly an overweight, underpowered, unstable death trap.
XN923Bloody hell! Now that would be worth seeing – any ideas when the last time a Battle saw air under its wheels was?
Adrian
I’m guessing one of the engine testbeds, probably not after the end of the war. There was an article on Battle testbeds in one of the mags lately, will check. I’d have thought target tugs and trainers would have been replaced by more suitable types by the middle of the war and parts would have been running low. Can’t imagine it was after 1945 if then that a Battle last flew.
I’m just going to sit back and wait while half a dozen people tell me how wrong I am now!
XN923Why is the port fuselage Dutch and the rest of the airframe Canadian?
Lovely aircraft though.
XN923Interesting that at the time the emphasis was on getting through the ‘sound barrier’ any which way. An aircraft was considered ‘supersonic’ if it could exceed Mach 1, no matter what the circumstances – so DH110, Hunter, Swift, all considered ‘supersonic’ at the time. The SBAC airshow used to require that all high performance aircraft begin their displays with a supersonic dive designed to plant the sonic booms on the crowd line. No doubt very impressive if done properly but the DH110 crash put an end to that. In the late 40s and early 50s it would have no doubt taken quite a bit of skill to get an aircraft through Mach 1, while still in control, even in a dive. Control in the transonic region was not so well understood and buffeting, drastic trim change and even control reversal was found by pilots trying to get through Mach 1 in this era.
Yeager’s first supersonic flight was a shallow dive I believe, but shortly after that the XS1 exceeded Mach 1 in level flight making it ‘genuinely’ supersonic.
XN923PR 9 was one planned by Airfix I believe:
http://airfix.com/cs/blogs/articles/archive/2006/02/21/27429.aspx
XN923I think a big bonus for them to continue doing well will be to continue the production and release of the four 1/48th Canberra kits.
With the recent disbanding of the type from RAF service, I think they will be popular kits to buy. With all the different varients that can be produced, it opens up a whole can of worms for the scale modeller, me included. I would love to produce a model in that scale of our Canberra at the MAM.
I think the problem with the Cranberries was that Airfix announced them at pretty much the same time as Classic Airframe released theirs. Faced with a TSR2 length wait or a more expensive kit there and then, a lot of people went for the latter, so I think orders for the Airfix kits were disappointing. I hope Hornby do continue with these though, not least because the CA kit will be unobtainable by the time they do come out.
The one I’m hoping for is the Nimrod. With very healthy pre-orders Hornby should have nothing to lose by continuing with these, though it is expensive.
XN923Pics were big help, thanks PhantomPhixer. That kit is nearly finished now and I’m rather pleased with it, though the U/C seems a bit off (only just attached it) and I may have to recourse to the plans again.
The comments about the Buccaneer are interesting. I’m halfway through one (a slow build with lots of mods) and the fit of the main part seems OK with encouragement. They are a little warped but with light pressure and tape to bring it all back together it’s fine. I’ve heard the fit of the TSR2 is iffy in places but this was such a well anticipated kit any criticism is going to be amplified. I haven’t started any of mine yet either.
Actually, I’ll give you that about the updated Spit Vc. I much prefer the earlier wings. I’ve never had a big problem with raised panel lines as long as they are delicate but mixing both kinds on the same kit seems a little wrong. My point was that the thinking was sound if the money wasn’t there for tooling a whole new kit in one go.
The point about Revell and Italeri is a good one, and I hope Hornby takes a good look at the brand and where it should go rather than simply trying to wring yet more money out of the same moulds.
Funnily enough PP, I’m also 30 and I remember the fantastic, then new, Lancaster, their Hurricane MkI (shorn of all the rivets and rather a nice kit even now) and decent Mustang as well as some of the WW1 kits. I must have been lucky enough to miss the really terrible ones but back then I tended to put any failings in the result down to my talents or lack of them rather than blame the kit. I also enjoyed some of the Matchbox kits (Fairey Seafox, Hunter trainer etc.) and couldn’t care less what kind of panel lines they had!
Anyway, in summary I think that Airfix had many faults and definitely needed work to catch up with their competitors. However, I think the potential was there and they were heading in the right direction before Heller ran into trouble. I hope Hornby take what was best of that and keep moving Airfix forward.
XN923As I recall the first supersonic flight was in a shallow dive, the second was level.
XN923not sure that a company that doesn’t invest and grow with the times should deserve to survive.
I think investing and moving with the times is exactly what Airfix were doing and they were unfortunate that Heller went into administration with the result that their moulds were unavailable. They had recently released a range of Sci-fi wargaming kits, the very well received Wallace and Gromit tie-ins not to mention the TSR2, Canberras and Nimrod. They’d also done some sensible reworking of older kits like the Spitfire Vc in 1/72 and 1/48 and then the MkIX in 1/48 which used the new wing mouldings for the MkVc. Also some of their more recent kits like the Spitfire 22/24 and EE Lightning were the equal of anything from Japan.
I don’t want to come across as Airfix’s biggest apologist (probably too late) and I freely admit there are some real dogs and kits which should have been put down years ago, but sweeping generalisations like ‘Airfix kits are all covered in big rivets and don’t fit’ are neither accurate nor helpful. The new management team was trying very hard and, I feel, getting there.
XN923Hang on, wasn’t it Geoffrey de Havilland in the DH108? Or am I thinking of Tony Garthwaite in the Ridgefield 902 ‘Prometheus’? (I’m sure I saw it in that documentary ‘The Sound Barrier’)
…In fact, now you mention it, I recall A.V. Roe describing very similar characteristics in his third flight in his triplane in 1908 – there’s some very compelling evidence on Wikipedia that the Avro Triplane could actually have gone supersonic if the wind was North Northwest and everyone in China jumped up and down at the same time.
Sorry guys, Yeager is the first person recorded to have broken Mach 1 and so he will remain. The rest is speculation.
XN923Airfix do deserve a little credit for originality – their Handley Page O/400 was as ground breaking as it was frustrating (and for certain aircraft in certain scales they are still the only game in town – 1/48 Buccaneer anyone?) though not as much as FROG or Matchbox. But then again, both those companies went under never to return apart from in the form of godawful reissues from Russia and Revell.
As James says though, the key is choice – and I’m glad I still have the choice to build Airfix kits as well as the better engineered but less interesting Far Eastern offerings.
XN923OK – is this ‘discussion’ going the way many do. Airfix has a range of kits that is probably unparralleled, many unique. OK, so some do require work to produce a masterclass model, but you could say the same of the old Frog Shackleton with its 10″ high rivets, or any Matchbox ( Revell ) kit and their ploughed panel lines.
I suspect that many of the people passing comments are more ‘assemblers of plastic kits’ rather than true modellers.
I for one am hugely relieved that Airfix, and Humbrol, look secure, and if I have to use a bit more wet and dry/filler/scratchbuilding – so be it. If you don’t want to put the effort in, there’s always Corgi – but I can build a more accurate model than that. 😉
Hear hear. It’s easy to forget that a lot of the Japanese kits have their problems too. You could fork out a tenner for a 1/72 Tamiya MkI Spitfire and it still wouldn’t be as accurate as the lovely little Airfix kit (I bought a Tamiya kit just so I could use the interior in the Airfix). While some Airfix kits are undoubtendly a right pain to put together, the MkVb and Ia Spitfires are some of the most suitable kits for beginners I can think of. It’s a lot more difficult to rectify the major outline problems of a wrong Hasegawa or Tamiya kit than it is to sand off the rivets, rescribe the panel lines and scratchbuild some interior details on an older Airfix kit.
Like JagRigger I tend to regard kits as a starting point anyway.
XN923Hi all, if anyone has any information regarding Canberra PR7 WH773 (other than whats already available on the Internet) Id be most grateful as Im restoring it. Also if anyone lives near to Gatwick Aviation Museum and would like to join me in its restoration then let me know.
Bex
I’m not far away from there and would be interested in helping out, though time may be an issue… (As you can see by my avatar and forum name I’m rather a fan of GAM’s aircraft…)
XN923What we need are modern kits of the Halifax, Stirling, Hampden, Blenheim etc. instead of ancient lumps of plastic covered in rivets and ill fitting canopies.
Cees
True, and we’ll be more likely to get those with Airfix around and in the market. Actually I quite like the Stirling, it’s not a bad kit by any stretch. The Halifax is old, sure, but in some respects Airfix’s early 80s Lancaster is better than the new Hasegawa one, and half the price.
£2.6 mil might seem low but I dare say the moulds won’t be freed from Heller anytime soon so there won’t be many kits that can be offered apart from the ones from the far east like the TSR2. The Cranberries and Nimrods were to be produced in the far east but who can say how far advanced they were?
I’m glad they’ve been rescued but it’s a shame they went under in the first place as they were picking up in terms of new kits and had a real winner on their hands with the TSR2. Some of the old monstrosities like the MkIX Spit were still hanging around long past their bedtime, but in general I like Airfix kits. I’m building the Hurricane IID at the moment (boxed as a I/IIb but with parts for a tankbuster) and it’s quite nicely engineered for its age, fit is more than OK and it’s more accurate in terms of outline than the Revell and Academy offerings. Sure, you have to sand all the rivets off but that’s a ten minute job – no longer than scraping the lame internal detail off the Revell cockpit before you can start detailing it.
Thanks Hornby.
XN923Possibly Hawker Henley – high hopes initially but unloved by most, overtaken by events and destined for unglamourous work. Better looking and more successful sibling.
No jokes about ‘never seeing action’ please!!!
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