Tuesday 1 February 2011

Airfix Spitfire - the forth part

Airfix Spitfire
It came to that time. A trip to the kitchen to get a saucer of water to float the transfers. I was back to being nine years old again. And I bet every one of you reading this smiled then.

One thing I am impressed with is the transfers. On the old kit you got about six - a couple of roundels, the squadron marks and the tail tricolours. On this newer kit there are thirty six! That's 36! All the above plus a wealth of tiny illegible (with or without glasses) instruction lettering for props, walkways etc. I started on the underside as to practice as when stuffed and mounted it won't really be seen. There are twelve separate transfers just for this as shown above.

Which brings me to a question. I understand that Airfix sell a lot of Spitfire kits, but this is a good quality kit with clear instructions and a vast sheet of transfers all for six quid. This about comparable to a 4mm wagon kit. So why can't we get even a small set of transfers with Parkside/Chivers et al? Would it be so hard? I know there are people who will say there are too many variants, but the same applies to aircraft kits and there is a mountain of specialist suppliers of add-on bits and transfers. If it were for instance a 1944 LNER box van it would only really need two basic options: one late grouping and one pre-tops BR; that would cover the vast majority of kit purchasers and would fit on a sheet the size of a large stamp. If you want other variants then you buy from the add-on merchants. It works here, why not railways?

Anyway just to do the underside took me an hour. I turned the plane over and got one roundel on when I got called down for my tea...

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