The ones that got away

Good stories so far,

Have you ever had one get away on you that really bothered you more than usual?

Here's the one that really breaks my heart even today:

About 7 years ago, I happened upon a Russian made kit of a Lavochkin 15 jet fighter in 1/72 in a consignment lot.

Of course I snapped it up right away because it was such a different thing in subject matter.

All was going well, then it all went to Hell. To this day I'm not sure what went wrong with it to make it get away on me.

I know the chances of me ever seeing a Lavochkin 15 in any scale are slim to none (unless of course someone like Pavla is merciful and generous :-) )

For those that don't know about the Lavochkin 15, it was a comtemporary of the MiG-15. In many respects it was superiour to the MiG (better avionics, some better flight characteristics).

It was built in modest numbers and used strictly as an interceptor by the Soviet Union. It was never exported. The MiG-15 got preferential treatment as it was a cheaper, simpler aircraft with less of a learning curve for both air and ground crews, it also required less field support equipment than the Lavochkin did.

To its credit, the Lavochkin is said to have been as popular with its pilots as the MiG was with it's.

Other rarities that I lost:
VEB 1/100 Let 410 Tubolet
Heller 1/72 SAAB 29 Tunnan (nice kit, love to see it re-issued)
Bilek 1/72 Aero L-29 Delfin
Bilek 1/72 Antonov AN-2 Colt

The Aber hinges were an impulse buy at a hobby show. The seller had some good price on his p/e sets and I thought "What the heck, why not?" I don't think any future armor kits I build will have open tool boxes or front fenders that can move.

Mine didn't get away, but I have always had trouble with them-- I am talking about the Accurate Miniatures kits. Don't get me wrong- I love them and enjoy the attention to detail and try to but one whenever I see it in the store....and the problem is this:

I have read over and over again how people have enjoyed them and had no fit problems. I have built three of them-- the IL-2, Yak-1b, and the SBD-5...and in every case, I have had trouble fitting the fuselage around the cockpit...I don't know what I am doing wrong as everyone else seems not to have problems....but everytime I build one, I come across it.

Even with the Tamiya Mosquito I am working on now...and I know their fit is always pretty good-- I tried gluing the fuselage halves around the compartment and had a huge fit problem....this one is probably the 30th model I have built...but something went awry... :(

I went TDY to Korea from Okinawa in 1977. I saw several kits of the F-100C & F-100F in 1/50 scale. The models were rather crude with a lot of flash but looked like they could be built into a nice model. When I went back six months later the kits could not be found anywhere and no one knew how to locate one. I am still kicking myself.

Yeah, thats why I try to avoid them. I'll try to scratchbuild a component first out of styrene or whatever before even thinking about resorting to such masochistic routes as photoetch things.

Don't ya just love it when these PE manufacturers make these itsy bitsy teeny weeny parts that would give fits to a watchmaker trying to put them together.

I am mocked by the DML Stug IV and their Sturmpanzer IV "Brummbar'" Horrible fit problems, the upper and lower hulls don't want to fit together and the #%$^$^$ p/e set included in the kits. I finally finished the Stug IV (cursing and kicking all the way) but the Brummbar sits on the shelf mocking me at night like the dummy in the ventriloquist movie with Anthony Hopkins (the title escapes me, can somebody help?!?!?) I'm certain soon I will be driven insane by Aber's p/e workable hinge set and the taunts thrown my way by the Brummbar. Aaaaargh!!!!!!

Know what you mean. In my search (pre-Tamiya kit) for a T-55 tank, I got the one by SKIF Models in the Ukraine. How many T-55's do you think they'd have sitting around for these guys to look at? The SKIF kit was just as wrong as all the others. Dumbfounded the heck outta me... I bought the Tamiya kit (a real beaut') and dumped the SKIF kit on ebay.

I haven't seen the TB-3 myself or heard anything about it one way or the other.

Reviews can be useful but you have to bear in mind that there are modelers like yourself that enjoy the challenge, others like getting spoon fed with flawless fit and all the bells and whistles, then there's folks like me that sit somewhere in between.

I like a challenge, the smooth road is a boring one. I've had Revell's 1/32 MiG-21 on the go for nearly 5 years, there's lots of challenges there, but she's not going to get away on me. Sometimes, however, I look at the challenges facing me in a kit and I say, "Now thats just ridiculous, there's no excuse for the manufacturer to have let that one slide through quality control"

For me, the MiG-31 fell into the latter category, I didn't give up on her easily, but the fact that an Eastern European manufacturer wouldn't create just a slightly better fit and finish to a kit of one of their own domestic products annoys me greatly.

It reminded me somewhat of another that got away on me, Fujimi's 1/48 Mitsubishi F-1/T-2 kit. no fit problems, but I nearly fell asleep do to a lack of even basic internal detail and trying to track down what scant references I could find on the beast to compensate for the deficiencies. The fact that a Japanese manufacturer who's probably no more than a hop skip and a jump from an airbase with these aircraft stationed on it would let themselves get away with such a lacking 1/48 representation of one of their nation's own products is incomprehensible to me.

I'll take kits with their fit problems and higher than normal filler requierments, but when a detail that should be represented in the kit, even in a basic form, is missing, that just leaves me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Upnorth - Have you seen ICM's TB-3? This thing builds up like a balsa model with fuselage formers, wing spars and ribs etc, etc. Just got one off ebay for $9. The moldings look clean with very little flash, if any. The corrigated detail looks nice. I've read reviews on it that run across the spectrum. One says great fit, while another says fit is terrible. I read one review on the web where the modeler building it hated every minute of building it that I was figuring he was going to give up on modeling altogether! He was really depressed. Me, I have always enjoyed the challenge if a difficult or impossible kit. My ICM MiG-31 is coming along fine and I can't wait to get going on the TB-3!!!

Well, mine is more of a 'paint' issue than a 'kit' issue, but it has to be my Has. 1/48 Cessna Citation kit. Nothing really complex about the kit, but the paint scheme I was trying for just didn't work out. It's been stripped and redone so many times I've lost count. The interior is now ruined from all of the stripping and cleaning. It's in the 'spares' box now and has become a 'mule' for testing various primers, paints, etc. The elevators are good for wrapping sandpaper around them and sanding in tight corners...

M.

Oh, do you ever have a battle going with that ICM kit.

The lines and shapes are right, the biggest problem I had was telling flash from part. The edges of a lot of the parts seemed to taper gradually to flash rather than have an obvious step that would differentiate the part from the flash easily.

When I got the flash taken care of, some of the attatchment surfaces were so thin at their edges that the liquid cement made a horrible join and not only did I have to go heavy on the filler but I had to sand down all kinds of welts and sinkages caused by the glue on the thin areas.

Its to my understanding that the ICM kit was first released by another company called Condor.

I suppose a good part of my frustration with the ICM MiG is that I had just come off of one of ICM's 1/48 Spitfires and it was everything a modeler could ask for in a kit and more.

Good stories so far, lets keep em' coming

Hey Upnorth - Just so happens I just got started on an ICM MiG-31. I have two MiG-31 kits, the ICM kit and one by Zvezda. After eyeballing both kits in their boxes, I liked the look of the ICM kit better. The panel line engraving on ICM is much better. Zvezda has heavier lines (usually OK for Russian planes) but the problem is that all lines are exactly the same, including control surfaces. This makes the control surfaces look like any other panel lines. I knew from the start the ICM kit was going to be a challenge and require lots of putty. Sink holes galore and I was betting the fit would be bad too. Well, I'm not disappointed! I got all those sink holes filled and it's partly assembled. the shape looks OK so it may build up fine, but I feel I have a good fight on my hands!

An Esci/Ertl F/A-18 Hornet. Just didn't want to cooperate. Has now been replaced by a Hasegawa.

Tamiya's U.S. halftrack line .... don't know why but they hated me. sniff .... sniff