O.K. folks, this isn’t really a complaint on my part, more an observation than anything.
I just bought a couple of Czechmasters aftermarket sets for my Eduard 1/72 L-39 Albatros and was rather surprized by some of the choices the company made of things to include.
The interior set includes a very nice cockpit with resin, photoetch and film parts, but it also includes a vac form canopy. There’s nothing at all wrong with the injection molded canopy that comes with the kit, the only reason I can see for including the canopy in the aftermarket set is due to the way the cockpit is designed to be installed.
The exterior set includes separate flaps and ailerons and other control surfaces, but the horizontal stabilizers are provided along with the elevators. I can see the elevators being provided, but there’s no difference between the kit supplied horizontal stabilizers and the resin aftermarket ones.
Like I say, its not meant to be a complaint, I am happy to have the aftermarket around and I bought these two sets for a fraction of what they would have cost me in Canada.
Anybody else ever bought an aftermarket set for anything and then wondered why something was included as an “improvement” when there was nothing wrong with the kit part it was meant to replace?
Not in my limited experience, though I do sometimes wonder how in the world are you supposed to get some of those tiny PE parts off the fret and on to the model without 1)losing it to the carpet monster or 2) losing your mind and eyesight trying to bend it to the correct shape! Maybe that’s just me, though…
Yup, I wonder exactly that with about 50% of the parts in any given Aber PE set!
The 50% I do end up using still makes the set worth getting…but I just wonder WHY they include some of the nutty things they do?
Actually, in many cases, I feel that the AM part is WORSE than the original part it was supposed to improve! No problem…I just use the bits that I think will actually improve the model, and keep the other bits to use as raw material for scratchbuilding.
The logic seems quite simple; to me anyway. In the case of the vac canopy, many modelers want something thinner than the kit part. After all, most 72nd canopies, no matter how well molded, are entirely too thick to be in scale. The opposite could be said of a vac, but once any appropriate detail is added on the inside of the frames, that’s a moot point.
The case of the horizontal stabs is even simpler logic than the canopy. Why should one cut the kit piece apart and then prepare the trailing edge of the stab to accept a resin piece when both pieces can be supplied, ready to go with little fuss? It’s especially convenient for a modeler to be able to do that and quite easy for the manufacturer of the detail set to provide the modeler with that convenience, especially in such a small scale.
I haven’t worked with a lot of PE but the little exposure I’ve had so far has me sharing J-Hulk’s reaction. I’ve adopted a frustration balanced with realism approach…if I have a kit part and the PE requires build ing a 3-D replacement using .5 mm interior supports, then the plastic part will do just fine in order to save my sanity. [:D]
I seldom use everything included on PE frets, mainly cause I really don’t like working with PE that much. But for every modeler like me theres sure to be one or more who use everything. I guess I’m shortchanging myself. Most resin accessories are pretty good, but there are a few where they obviously just copied the kit parts in resin. These irritate me a lot.
I take what I want, which a maybe 1% of the entire set, and I pay for it. Why on earth do I pay more for a set of seatbelts and a control panel than what I paid for the entire kit, including paint, I will never understand. Must be the exposure to too much paint thinner and clouded my sense of judgement.
I HATE PE!!! I don’t see why manufacturers have to include “30 different style of the malcolm hood” for the p51. 2 is enough. Resin landing gear is not the way to go, they snap so easily it’s not funny. It’s almost as easy to make some out of white metal. Kit decals usually suck. I just wish that manufacturers would get mike grant designs, cartograph, or other things. I would personally rather have vinyl masks than decals.
