Now AMK’s 1/48 F-14D is finally here, I’m going to build it side-by-side with Tamiya’s recent F-14D release. The Tamiya is said to be a lovely kit, and I recently enjoyed AMK’s Mig-31, so this ought to be fun. I bought both kits myself, and this is the first time I have built either, so you’ll be getting my honest impressions as I go, desk to keyboard with no filters in the way.
The F-15 is possibly my all-time favourite plane, and the E model’s variety of ordnance and interesting weathering makes it a very compelling subject. I had heard that the GWH 1/48 kit was very good, but found the reality to be more complex. How far into a build can you get before realising the kit isn’t as good as you hoped? Twenty minutes in this case.
It has been interesting and instructive to look back on my past ten or so years of modelling, but there’s little point if we can’t learn anything from it. I need to learn something, because at this point I feel like I am just circling, unable to improve. I have successfully reached a stage where I can easily build models to a decent quality, often with a nice finish, but I know that I am a long way from the quality of the guys I really look up to.
While thinking of what I wanted to say for a 2019 roundup, I realised I got back into modelling in 2009. That’s not quite ten years, because of how numbers work, but it still feels like a good point to pause and reflect on how I got here. All I can say is that I hadn’t realised I’d improved that much. The bar was set low…
I neither wanted nor expected to enjoy this kit, but once I got used to it, I found a very pleasant build experience. But don’t get the wrong idea: this kit has plenty of oddities…
Is it a stag? Is it a dragonfly? Is it an owl? Tamiya’s He 219 is a really nice little kit.
After watching the Ukrainian Flanker’s demonstration at RIAT this summer, I wanted to build one. So I did.
A Cold War Reconnaissance group build? What could be a better fit than a big SR-71? Admittedly I didn’t realise how big this kit was going to be, nor how frustrating.
Sometimes, you know a kit will be so much work that you just can’t summon the motivation to get started unless something gives you a prod. In my case, that kit was Aoshima’s 1/350 Kongo, and the prod a pair of group builds: the “whole year build” at Rivet Counters, and the “1944” build at Warts and All. These overlapped nicely: one encouraging modellers to get really stuck in and pull out all the stops, and the other being the year the kit relates to.
It had been a while since I built a tank kit, so when The Group Build Group (it’s a thing, honest) on Facebook ran “WWII” as their next subject, I took the opportunity to dust off Meng’s King Tiger.