Airfix 1/48 Supermarine Walrus Mk.1 New Tool
Posted: October 6th, 2017, 11:09 am
Reasonably hot off the presses, this is a quick look inside the box at the much awaited (and possibly surprising) new tool version of the Supermarine Walrus from our friends at Airfix.
Once you look past the glaring omission of moulding it in the wrong scale, first impressions are that it is going to make a lot of people very happy; it has all the ingredients to build up into a cracking model 'out of the box', and already the AM producers are churning out loads of extras to add to the fun!
The box (450mm x 250mm x 70mm; the same size as a few recent larger releases for ease of storage ) is the now normal Airfix sturdy glossy box, with a top opening seperate lid and inner tray. The contents fill the avialable space nicely, but without being crammed in, and with enough space to store a few AM goodies as well so you don't (like me ) forget you have them when you finally get around to building the kit!
The instructions are A4 and are again the normal Airfix 'colour' type, although now with a few parts picked out in green as well as the previous red. As ever, they look to be clearly laid out, with optional parts/fit identified well. There are two glossy A3 sheets which contain the painting guides for the three schemes provided, together with a rigging diagram for those intending to play cats cradle (go on, you know you want to..... ) and provide full rigging. The parts do not however appear to be drilled ready for rigging....
There is a nice set of decals, which appear to be to a very high standard, very very sharply printed and seemingly in register.
There are 5 frames of parts moulded in standard Airfix grey; from a reasonably careful look through, there does not appear to be any flash, sprue gates are mostly fairly small and there does not appear to be any short-shot parts. The fuselage interior does seem to have suffered from an attack of measles; there are a lot of ejector pin marks between the interior framing, which will take a while to fill and sand out I suspect. There is one further frame of clear parts; again no flash and the canopy glazing is nice and thin, clear and with well defined framing.
I cannot see any reason at all why even a novice builder shouldn't get a decent result out of this kit, even taking into account the (with certain other biplane kits....) need to set two main wing assemblies. The instructions appear to show that this has been well thought out and engineered, making it a (fairly) simple operation. More experienced builders (with or without AM extras) will be able to produce a cracking model without too much effort.
As far as accurracy is concerned, I cannot comment; suffice to say that I suspect it will look pretty much like a Walrus when built, and that's close enough for this bodger
Once you look past the glaring omission of moulding it in the wrong scale, first impressions are that it is going to make a lot of people very happy; it has all the ingredients to build up into a cracking model 'out of the box', and already the AM producers are churning out loads of extras to add to the fun!
The box (450mm x 250mm x 70mm; the same size as a few recent larger releases for ease of storage ) is the now normal Airfix sturdy glossy box, with a top opening seperate lid and inner tray. The contents fill the avialable space nicely, but without being crammed in, and with enough space to store a few AM goodies as well so you don't (like me ) forget you have them when you finally get around to building the kit!
The instructions are A4 and are again the normal Airfix 'colour' type, although now with a few parts picked out in green as well as the previous red. As ever, they look to be clearly laid out, with optional parts/fit identified well. There are two glossy A3 sheets which contain the painting guides for the three schemes provided, together with a rigging diagram for those intending to play cats cradle (go on, you know you want to..... ) and provide full rigging. The parts do not however appear to be drilled ready for rigging....
There is a nice set of decals, which appear to be to a very high standard, very very sharply printed and seemingly in register.
There are 5 frames of parts moulded in standard Airfix grey; from a reasonably careful look through, there does not appear to be any flash, sprue gates are mostly fairly small and there does not appear to be any short-shot parts. The fuselage interior does seem to have suffered from an attack of measles; there are a lot of ejector pin marks between the interior framing, which will take a while to fill and sand out I suspect. There is one further frame of clear parts; again no flash and the canopy glazing is nice and thin, clear and with well defined framing.
I cannot see any reason at all why even a novice builder shouldn't get a decent result out of this kit, even taking into account the (with certain other biplane kits....) need to set two main wing assemblies. The instructions appear to show that this has been well thought out and engineered, making it a (fairly) simple operation. More experienced builders (with or without AM extras) will be able to produce a cracking model without too much effort.
As far as accurracy is concerned, I cannot comment; suffice to say that I suspect it will look pretty much like a Walrus when built, and that's close enough for this bodger