Gondor's Grumblings

[NARSES2]

A conscientious seller should take note of multiple complaints about a courier and stop using them.  If the seller is not conscientious and ignores multiple complaints then they deserve to take a hit.

If I'm after something in future where the seller uses Evri I'm quite prepared to pay extra for RM. If they turn that offer down then I'll look elsewhere.

[Gondor]

If I'm after something in future where the seller uses Evri I'm quite prepared to pay extra for RM. If they turn that offer down then I'll look elsewhere.

That is the line I am going to take in future on eBay.

Saying that, the second of the three parcels that they are supposedly "delivering" to me has turned up, despite my receiving an email saying that the item could not be found after a two-day search of the depot. So there is a small amount of hope yet.

[Gondor]

If I'm after something in future where the seller uses Evri I'm quite prepared to pay extra for RM. If they turn that offer down then I'll look elsewhere.

That is the line I am going to take in future on eBay.

Saying that, the second of the three parcels that they are supposedly "delivering" to me has turned up, despite my receiving an email saying that the item could not be found after a two-day search of the depot. So there is a small amount of hope yet.

Despite saying that, a new item that I have won on eBay, an Italeri Stirling B.1, is being sent via Evri. The collection point method made it look as if it was being sent via Royal Mail.
I have received reimbursement for the Airfix A-4B that I had bought and that Evri has lost. So I am looking for a replacement A-4B, just not very hard at the moment.

[NARSES2]

I have the feeling that whilst Evri's tracking system tells you the package is "on the way" what in fact happens is, is that they deliver it to the poorly paid contract drivers who then sit on it until they have a few parcels for your area which makes their contract work slightly more viable ? Although saying that I did have one delivery in a "Evri" logo'd van, the other two were by freelancers.

[Gondor]

I have the feeling that whilst Evri's tracking system tells you the package is "on the way" what in fact happens is, is that they deliver it to the poorly paid contract drivers who then sit on it until they have a few parcels for your area which makes their contract work slightly more viable ? Although saying that I did have one delivery in a "Evri" logo'd van, the other two were by freelancers.

That could be part of it. It fails to account for the lost item that reached their depot, and then nothing

[Gondor]

I decided to look at both the Special Hobby and Tamiya Night Fighter kits. Very interesting things I am starting to see, more of that later.

I was initially interested in the noses



In the picture, the left nose is the Special Hobby one; it has a clear part to represent the unpainted noses of some of the bullnose aircraft. In the middle is the Tamiya nose, and to the right is a resin replacement that Lee gave me a while ago.

My initial idea was to cut the bullnose from each kit, put the resin nose onto the Special Hobby kit and then transplant the Special Hobby nose onto the Tamiya kit. Lots of work which needs care and precision. So I thought, how difficult would it be to swap noses?

Bad move. Lee has said that the fuselage of the Special Hobby kit is somewhat "tubby". By my measurements, it is slightly. It definitely is too shallow between the top of the fuselage and the top of the bomb bay doors. I found this out by trying to match each nose to the other kit's fuselage. This showed up as the cockpit lip being either too high or too low, depending on which combination you look at. On checking, the Special Hobby looks as if it will fit their nose when the cockpit edges are aligned; I suspect the reverse will be true as well.

I will check the bomb bay depths tomorrow, as adjusting the noses would not be too difficult.

[The Wooksta!]

The resin piece is a clone of the Airkit one intended for ye olde (1973) Airfix kit.

I'm not sure how wide the SH NF30 is - I never bothered cutting bits of the sprue to measure, it went into the loft in disgust - but the PR16 is a good 3mm wider than the Tamiya and Airfix PR16.  Doesn't sound like much but visually, it looks bloated.  IIRC from just looking at the clear bits on the sprue, the NF30/36 bit looks too wide.

Not being arsey, but I really cannot understand why you'd even need to cut the nose off the Tamiya, when the only cutting necessary is to remove the single stage Merlins to replace with the Brengun 2 stage if you want an NF30 or 36 (the NF38 is another kettle of worms entirely*).  Other than the fin (which is 2-3mm too tall - I can live with it) and allegedly the radiator width (allegedly too wide according to one individual on Britmodeller - again, I can live with it), the Tamiya kit is pretty much bang on for shape and size according to those who've measured yer actual airframes.  If it was for the clear bit, that's pointless, because whilst it was clear, the ground crews scrubbed and sanded the interior so it was opaque.  Check the photos.  Incidentally, Aeroclub did a vac form nose for the Matchbox NF30/36 radome but it's rare - I didn't know he'd done it when he was still going. 

If you were going to cross kit the SH with Tamiya, I'd have just went for the Tamiya fuselage complete with the wings/engines from the SH (which appear to have little to no issues) and fit nicely over the Tamiya wing spars.  As the SH has separate flying surfaces with razor thin trailing edges, it could be a really good end result.  Well, if one likes posed surfaces.  I don't, because aircraft are rarely parked like that.  TBH, it's something I might do with the NF30 I do have, using a resin clone of the Tamiya nose and other bits, and a B.IV fuselage.  I have enough bits moulds for all sorts of mix and match, and at least then it's not being wasted.  I can supply a better set of rear internal radio gear for the NF30 than SH give you - I don't like where they have the rudder pedals as it looks very wrong, but the radar gear attached to the instrument panel seems okay.  I will be doing some casting later in the week, so some spares will do to use up any excess resin.

Not finished, but this is my NF36, straight Tamiya other than the Paragon (2006) 2 stage Merlins and the clear sprue inset into the starboard wing for the Z Lamps.

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Hope that Tamiya nose isn't too well glued, because threading the assembled cockpit into it will be...interesting.  Ask me how I know...

I'm actually curious to know how well the SH fuselage would fit over the drawings for the DH.102, the enlarged Sabre engined Mosquito development.  Might be a better basis for that.


*The NF38 had a slightly longer fuselage, 5 inches is mentioned somewhere, possibly a longer canopy.  Either way, the framing was revised.  It may or may not have had the enlarged horn balance elevators of the PR34/Sea Mosquito, I can't pin it down in the photos as yet. Richard Franks said it did, but he says a lot of things and most of them are complete bollards.  The RAF rejected it, stating performance issues and the radar wasn't up to scratch either.  A few remained in the UK for trials and some were used as instructional airframes, the bulk of production aircraft were sold to Yugoslavia and Isreal. As a result, I have zero interest in the type.

[Gondor]

The resin piece is a clone of the Airkit one intended for ye olde (1973) Airfix kit.

I'm not sure how wide the SH NF30 is - I never bothered cutting bits of the sprue to measure, it went into the loft in disgust - but the PR16 is a good 3mm wider than the Tamiya and Airfix PR16.  Doesn't sound like much but visually, it looks bloated.  IIRC from just looking at the clear bits on the sprue, the NF30/36 bit looks too wide.

Not being arsey, but I really cannot understand why you'd even need to cut the nose off the Tamiya, when the only cutting necessary is to remove the single stage Merlins to replace with the Brengun 2 stage if you want an NF30 or 36 (the NF38 is another kettle of worms entirely*).  Other than the fin (which is 2-3mm too tall - I can live with it) and allegedly the radiator width (allegedly too wide according to one individual on Britmodeller - again, I can live with it), the Tamiya kit is pretty much bang on for shape and size according to those who've measured yer actual airframes.  If it was for the clear bit, that's pointless, because whilst it was clear, the ground crews scrubbed and sanded the interior so it was opaque.  Check the photos.  Incidentally, Aeroclub did a vac form nose for the Matchbox NF30/36 radome but it's rare - I didn't know he'd done it when he was still going. 

My first question about your information is, where did you find this mythical 3mm, which is a large amount, especially if you are talking about fuselage width? I want to know exactly where and how you reached that measurement.

You say the Tamiya kit has a vertical tail 2mm too high, but you can live with that, yet you go all JMN about the Special Hobby kit as if it were one of Igor's creations.

I dug an Airfix PR XVI out of the loft this afternoon and, compared the fuselage halves between the Tamiya and SH kits. To my eye, with a technical training in my past, I found that the Tamiya fuselage had the bomb bay lower down the fuselage sides than either of the other two kits. The Bulldog nose of the Tamiya Night Fighter was also wrong in several ways. It is similar in plan and side elevation view to drawings, but the contours are wrong at the front, the hatch behind the perspex section of the radome is too narrow front to back as well. Not as good as the Airkit part you cloned, which is matched by the SH kit, so I am not sure that the Tamiya kit should be hailed as the gold standard that everyone is holding it up to be.

The SH kit probably does have errors, but not to the degree you are making out, especially when you are comparing it to something that has errors itself; that is not how you check anything. by the way, I help the quality department at work from time to time, as well as aligning scientific instriments to thousands of a millimeter, so dont tell me your 3mm is easy to see.

[The Wooksta!]

The "mythical" measurement is what I actually measured, you know, with a ruler, and compared with both Airfix and Tamiya.  It's all documented in the SH Mosquito thread on Britmodeller.

Taped up/glued fuselage from last year, days after the SH release. 

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Top Airfix. Middle Tamiya. Bottom Lardy

And from another angle

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The SH looks off, the nose is out and once seen, it cannot be unseen. And it's not just me that's seen it.  In most respects, the Airfix and Tamiya agree in length and with - Tamiya had a team craving over the airframes at Salisbury Hall and Airfix laser scanned one at Cosford.

The Tamiya fin.  I found out it was too tall far too late for most of mine.  I'm not cutting and shutting fins for upwards of the thirty or so I have (so far) planned or the 47 that have already got past the painted stage, not to mention those already completed?  By eye, it looks fine and if the bulk of the kits are based on the Tamiya, who can tell if they're wrong?  If indeed the bomb bay line is too far down, well, again, a mm on something underneath, isn't something I'm going to get too worried about and again, I've got 30 plus done - do I go back and fix all of those?  Bollards to that.

If the SH Mosquito were one of Igor's atrocities I'd be a damn sight more acidic and vitriolic.  As it is, I've praised the good parts of the kit (the wings and engines are excellent) and slammed the bits that are wrong.  I've also criticised the Airfix 16 where that's wrong (and when they had a chance to fix some of the errors recently with the new sprue, they didn't bother to do so, despite many pointing them out on initial release in 2021) and pointed out the areas of the Tamiya Mosquito where that needs modification to get an airframe correct at a specific point in time. 

As for the Tamiya bullnose?  Perhaps you should stick your findings up on Britmodeller and let others who are more informed than myself loose with them.  It's the first time I've heard mention that it may not be what it could be.

[Gondor]

Lee, I was questioning the 3mm, not that it was too wide. As they measured the Belgian example, are we sure it hadn't been eating lots of chocolates?
When I measured the width of the fuselage, just forward of the strengthening band, with a set of callipers, I found the difference between the SH fuselage and the Airfix and Tamiya kits, which matched in that dimension, to be only 2.5mm, not 3mm.
I also looked at how much callipers are. You can buy a set for less than a tenner off a well-known site

[Gondor]

With my latest receipt, my seventh Short Stirling, I have enough for all my plans 

Well, at least enough for the plans I have. The Stirling Stash has two Italeri Mk. 1s, two Mk, III's and three Airfix offerings. The Airfix kits will be the most heavily converted, while one of each type that I have of the Italeri kit will become a 100 Group aircraft and an MR version.

[Gondor]

I decided yesterday to simply go ahead and order a new pair of glasses. I had my eyes checked, a lovely blue with yellow stripes.   

I followed my usual picking of the cheapest and thinnest frame I could find; that way, I don't notice that I am wearing them as much as if they were thicker frames. The total still came to over two hundred, though. I was offered to have them change just the one lens, but I pointed out that without the glasses I have, I would not be able to read at all, so better just get a new pair outright.

Modelling-wise, not much has been done. I have been faffing about checking one thing against another and generally planning what to do next. I was going to prime a Canberra PR3 nose, but it's been raining most of the afternoon, and so too damp to spray the primer while standing at the door.

Medically, I have an appointment with my doctor as a follow-on from finding out about the arthritis. Because I now know about the arthritis, I am noticing that my joints are not as good as I thought they were. Nothing like having something brought to your attention to make you notice it more. My knees are "warm" is the best way I can explain it, other than some times when I am climbing the stairs up into the flat. The hips are not much of a problem, but my right shoulder is starting to complain a bit, especially when driving.

[NARSES2]

The total still came to over two hundred, though.

Think yourself lucky  My last pair were a tad over £500 and I'll probably need a new pair come June 

As for knees ? Mine are just about B'd, but then I should have stopped playing football when the Dr told me to    So I can't complain. Currently in line for a replacement.

[Rheged]

The total still came to over two hundred, though.

Think yourself lucky  My last pair were a tad over £500 and I'll probably need a new pair come June 

As for knees ? Mine are just about B'd, but then I should have stopped playing football when the Dr told me to    So I can't complain. Currently in line for a replacement.

My   glasses cost £79;  with a second pair free (sunglasses, tinted,  driving, for the purpose of)  Apart from occasional twinges in my right knee  and ankle, that remind me that cross country running in my mis-spent youth was not really a good idea, all  the joints are currently  bearing an even strain.

|Much sympathy for the pain in the exchequer that this is causing you!

Update next day.............I spoke too soon..........see my post here:- https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=35789.1650

[Rick Lowe]

NZ$200 for the latest pair, including the eye exam... 50% sale at Specsavers.
I was hoping to Buy Local, but at the prices they wanted to charge me... Not on your Horatio Nelly.