I wish to clear up a misconception spread....

"Ahh kin pee on three cans throw'd in the air"....

???

the doog

"Ahh kin pee on three cans throw'd in the air"....

He ain't got nothing on the Waco kid!

Spruce: I was compensated; but it wasn't agreed on before hand. I received a kit, which was all I really ever wanted; the whole reason I started the project was because I wanted a CVL myself, but rather than research and fix problems on the kit like i had been doing on the Trumpeter Essex, it seemed like it was more worth  my time to research and fix the problems before they got committed to plastic. The instructions, etc., weren't even on my radar at that point. It's been an evolving relationship in that sense. In the interest of full disclosure, I also asked for, and received, three extra kits for the purpose of sending to other people that had helped. So in the literal sense I had four kits in my possession, but three of them were not for me.

Tracy:

Did Dragon listen to you and correct the faults you uncovered?

Sprue-ce Goose

Tracy:

Did Dragon listen to you and correct the faults you uncovered?

On the kit? Oh heck yes, like you wouldn't believe. They essentially scrapped their CAD twice and started over from scratch. The first iteration was a scale-up of the 700th kit and it was UGLY. We located plans, hull lines, etc., and had them scrap the hull and redraw it. Looked much better but then the superstructure looked weird... it turned out it was maybe 10-15% over-scale. They scrapped that and redid it. Then we started getting into the details.

One big lesson I learned quickly was that they are not "ship guys." They are great model kit designers, but I couldn't say things like "move the chock three feet forward" and expect them to do it.

They would send close ups of the island, the catwalks, etc., and I would look them over, find the errors, then locate photos of that specific area or detail and copy that into the CAD screen shot and circle the errors and write correction notes. There was some thought from another individual who was helping that there was no point in detailing the hangar deck, but I managed to figure out the pattern of air ducts, and it wasn't as complex as it looked from the plans, and whereas I'd just hoped to have an inch or two from the elevators detailed out, once we had this pattern Dragon went ahead and added ALL of the ducts, even the ones people aren't going to be able to see.

So yeah, as far as the kit goes, Dragon was willing to "lose" money by doing re-work, and we probably drove them nuts with the change requests. But they stuck with it and the product that is on the shelf today is an order of magnitude better than the first iteration.

With the instructions, essentially, there was bad coordination and schedule management. They had committed to a release date and were  trying to maintain that schedule. The instructions can't be done until the very end, in case there is a piece that needs to be changed in the CAD at the last moment. We were actually changing pieces up until the last  moment; particularly in the shape of the rear of the anti-torpedo blister. They have a limited number of molding machines available, and if you delay a production run by a week, what does that do to the rest of the scheduled runs?

So there was that, and then when the instructions were sent to us on a Friday, they told us they were planning on printing them on the following Monday! They did give us an extra day when we found a ton of typos (all of the island part  number call-outs were wrong) and that also gave me a chance to write a request to change the order so that they were starting from the bottom and working their way up and out, leaving the most fragile pieces for last. They sort-of implemented it, changing the order of construction, but leaving the initial full sub-assemblies.

There just wasn't time at that point to rework them any further. It would have delayed shipment and deliveries, and I'm sure there would have been financial costs from the shippers, etc. I chalked it up as a lesson and asked that we have more dialogue about instructions on the next ship kit. They were positive to the idea, but I haven't even seen the first revision of CAD for Princeton yet, so the instructions are a ways off at this point.

Thank you all for laying out some very valuable information concerning this hobby.  I hope that Dragon will hear the distant drumbeat and exert some effort to improve the quality of their construction instructions.  It is widely agreed that the quality of their product is superb, but the important area of building instruction is woefully inept.  A model builder, whether a pro or a hand holder, deserves a complete and accurate set of instructions when they lay down $100+ for a kit.  Instructions are not easy to produce, but they are far from impossible. 

If modeling forums are regarded small ponds if intelligence/opinion by manufacturers, that is a mistake of either ignorance or arrogance on their part.  This forum and its magazine represents a large concentration of customers.  A relatively small hobby in a besieged economy needs to carefully nurture its customers.  Indifference to requests and needs will encourage customers to spend their shrinking dollars elsewhere.   It is also difficult to see expensive kits accompanied by lame instructions when kits valued at a fraction of that cost can provide superbly accurate and detailed plans.  Manufacturer indifference, or "do your own research"  just doesn't cut it.  Those who get wind of this information should consider it carefully.  It paints a bad picture of a very desirable kit.  Rick.

Wabashwheels

I hope that Dragon will hear the distant drumbeat and exert some effort to improve the quality of their construction instructions.  It is widely agreed that the quality of their product is superb, but the important area of building instruction is woefully inept. 

A model builder, whether a pro or a hand holder, deserves a complete and accurate set of instructions when they lay down $100+ for a kit.  Instructions are not easy to produce, but they are far from impossible. 

It is also difficult to see expensive kits accompanied by lame instructions when kits valued at a fraction of that cost can provide superbly accurate and detailed plans.  Manufacturer indifference, or "do your own research"  just doesn't cut it.  Those who get wind of this information should consider it carefully.  It paints a bad picture of a very desirable kit.  Rick.

Boilerplate: This is my opinion and not that of any of the model/cottage industry companies I work with.

I don't think it's strict indifference; but how a company chooses to invest resources. For example, my site (linked below) is a small resource center; I check in the stats about once a month and see where the traffic is coming from; if there's a spike of some new site I'm not familiar with I will check it out. If it looks like it could be worth my time I will create an account on the message board side and interact with the people and foster traffic and relationships that way. But that can be a significant investment of time if it's a busy site.

Who within a model company invests that time? A PR person? Or do we take time away from a designer and slow down their output of kits? Dragon also has the issue of being a Chinese company selling on the international market; do they then need to have people monitoring traffic on the Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Philippine, etc., message boards?

There is then the "tempest in a Tea Kettle" aspect, wherein small items *cough* get turned into a major crisis by a single user or small group. We know, for example, based on Manstein's frequent "Tirpitz" posts, that if Dragon were to post here he would probably respond to each post with "Instructions" to make his point. Lest Manstein think that by "small items" I am referring to his instructions, I am actually referring to plastic models, which are literally small and factually trivial to anyone walking through a live mine field or otherwise being shot at or bombed. OK, a little off tangent there, but I wanted to try and be a little more precise as I seem to regularly write things that people take differently than I anticipate.

Web forums tend to magnify small problems and make it nearly impossible for a manufacturer to have positive relations. How about the Nagato a couple of years back where posters were demanding new hull pieces minus the grid lines? How much would that have cost them, how many people REALISTICALLY cared, and how many people still think about it today? How many people who said they'd boycott Hasegawa over it still are?

I think you will find most of the major manufacturers think that forums are more trouble than they're worth. I haven't strictly talked to Dragon about it, I have sent a couple of links to them in the past to make a point (more about trying to get a product out than anything, I really want those 1/350th figures released separately!), so let me close by reminding everyone that I work WITH them, not FOR them, and their opinions are probably different than the ones I expressed here.

soooo in a nut shell......Customer Service is out the door....not important....well those who post in these forums just happen to be their customer base...if they dont listen to the end user than who do they listen too????

and come on,,,,,instructions should be and most other companies do make them universal....im sure all of us have had kits with all the writing in Japanese and didnt have  a problem understanding them....why...BECAUSE who ever wrote them cared about making them understandable...

Stop making excuses for poor customer service....

c

Tracy White

There is then the "tempest in a Tea Kettle" aspect, wherein small items *cough* get turned into a major crisis by a single user or small group. We know, for example, based on Manstein's frequent "Tirpitz" posts, that if Dragon were to post here he would probably respond to each post with "Instructions" to make his point. Lest Manstein think that by "small items" I am referring to his instructions, I am actually referring to plastic models, which are literally small and factually trivial to anyone walking through a live mine field or otherwise being shot at or bombed. OK, a little off tangent there, but I wanted to try and be a little more precise as I seem to regularly write things that people take differently than I anticipate.

Ahh, hell Manny... Pony up for a 12.00 Monogram kit and have some fun... 

Hasta la vista baby!

No one can say they weren't warned. And if this thread is renewed, account suspensions will occur.

Have a nice weekend!

Aaron