Editorial

Good day, Ladies and Gentlemen! 

Sometimes I get lucky and write these editorials in an interesting place, and this is one of those times. I am writing the June newsletter editorial during the first weekend of June at Bublava in the Ore Mountains, at a police recreation center where this year's Iron Bunny competition is taking place. This time, the competition teams are building our 48th scale P-51B Mustang. In addition to the kit, they also have a number of accessories available to them, including the engine, and the usual 24 hour allowance of hard work to present their efforts. Those of you who watched this year's Iron Bunny on the live stream from Bublava know the winner, something I personally won’t find out til Monday, when this newsletter comes out, but at the moment, I am in the dark regarding the winner. It’s been raining heavily here steadily and the meteorologists' warnings of heavy downpours and possible flooding are coming true. This year, Iron Bunny is an even bigger adventure than usual!

 When I left for Bublava on Friday, we were testing what should be the next-to-last mold for the 1:72nd scale P-51D Mustang, the mold with the fuselage and wings. On the first try, we received a complete set of plastic, to the general joy of the upper floors of the company, where the designers who needed to verify the accuracy of photoetched and decal designs were waiting for these pressings. While the decal for the first edition 1:72 P-51D, Royal Class kit is based on the 1:48th scale Royal Class release, and the 72nd scale kit design is based on the 1:48 kit design, that still doesn't mean we can just scale the 1/48th scale item down and run with it like a banshee. With the moldings in hand, we can be sure of the accuracy of the design, and the decals, photoetched and masks can go into production this week. At the same time, we sent the moldings to Omask so that they could verify the design of the plugs used for masking off the wheel wells for painting. These will be a part of the Royal Class package. The final mold will be going on the press this week, with the small parts, and if all goes well, we will be packing the Royal Class kits next week and starting to ship them to customers in the second half of June.

 The logistics surrounding the realization of a new kit is complex, the processes follow each other very precisely and we are pleased to have it tuned in such a way that it usually works precisely and reliably for us. Of course, it is not without cost and the whole process carries with it a lot of stress and tension. Major screwups and delays are rare, but they do happen. We just got over one of those little gems. Moldings for June’s release of the B-26F/G Marauder in 1:72nd scale left the Shimitz port near Shizuoka at the end of February. It normally takes six weeks for cargo ships to sail from Japan to Europe, this time our ship sailed twice as long thanks to the attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on cargo ships at the entrance to the Red Sea. A lot of maritime traffic is diverted along a route that circumnavigates Africa, making it longer and more expensive. Our Marauders have endured exactly that fate. To make matters worse, after the truck's arrival in the Czech Republic, the shipment was stopped by Czech customs officials, who inspected it and thus delayed the delivery of the pressings for another week. As a result, boxes with ready-made components were waiting for the plastic until May 27th, and several dozen incomplete shipments were also waiting for dealers from all over the world. The result of the whole sh*tshow was that we did not start sending shipments until May 28th, instead of May 15th, which would’ve been our standard-procedure date to send out new releases for June. It sounds like a fun story, but in our setup, where we pack and ship an average of eighty new items a month, a delay of even a single item means a stop sign for all shipments. We do prepare them as far as we can, but most orders wait to ship til they are complete. Of course, it depends on the type of item being held. If it's a mask or a small piece of PE, for example, some people opt to have it sent to them a month later. On the other hand, you probably understand that the production of masks or small PE items don’t generally suffer delays at our end. However, an item like the Marauder, which has the highest sales numbers of any June release by a wide margin, has significantly higher destructive potential if any of its many components fail to show at the right place at the right time. And man, was that ever the case with the Marauder! Almost 100% of orders were waiting for the Marauder and our business completely froze for two weeks. So if they don't have Marauders in your store yet, please be patient and hold out for a few days. They are definitely on their way and they will definitely arrive. The Houthis should no longer play any role in their delivery.

 Coincidentally, on the same day as the sprues for the Marauders, the plastic for the 72nd scale Delfin arrived. They flew in by plane and there were no tricks associated with their arrival. This makes the Delfin another of the kits that have returned to the range after our fire in 2020. Another item is making a comeback today, the Adlerangriff 1/32, a Limited Edition kit dedicated to the Bf 109 E during the Battle of Britain. Some time ago, we mistakenly advertised its return to our range on Facebook, but unfortunately we did not have all the components ready at that time. On top of that, we needed to abandon the injection molding queue due to the high demands imposed by the new P-51B. We've churned out 16,000 sets for the Royal Class and the Limited Edition ‘The D-Day Mustangs’ kit, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel again and need to produce more for the August P-51B Profipack release. We made modifications to the mold to prevent that mysterious bending of the center strut above the wheel well. I hope this solves that tricky anomoly.

 Among June new releases there are, as usual, interesting pieces, whether it is the 72nd Bf 109 G-6 in the Profipack line, the 48th Spitfire Mk.Vb in a special sub-edition of the Weekend series dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, or the reissue of the 48th Profipack Fw 190 A-2. Among the new Brassin products, you will find a collection of kits for the P-51B in 1:48, the cockpit for the F-35B in 1:48th from Tamiya, the engines for the Beaufort from ICM and the brake chute for the F-4E from Meng. Although the break chute is specifically noted as being designed for the Meng kit, it can also be used on other Phantom IIs. We took this chute to almost every exhibition we attended last year, and at many of them it was able to garner at least as much interest among modelers as the most attractive kits. Also lovely are the 1:350 scale Japanese naval anti-aircraft guns. In photoetched and masks, a collection of sets for the 48th scale B-26 Marauder from ICM and B-24 from Hobby Boss, and for the A-20 in 1:32 scale from HKM are on offer, and sets for the S-79 Sparviero from Italeri should also prove to be interesting.

 However, that is not all that awaits us in June. On Thursday, June 6th, we will start accepting pre-orders for the Limited Edition kit, ‘The Bloody Hundredth 1943’,  B-17F 1:48. You already know what this project is about. We have been reporting on it for several months now, and in the last few days the information about it on social networks has been very detailed, and so is the information in today's newsletter. I'd like to add a few details to all of this that haven't been covered yet. The Bloody Hundredth 1943 is our biggest, most challenging and also most expensive project to date, to be realized using the plastic from another company, that we have ever prepared. We have been working on it since last fall in cooperation with the 100th Bomb Group Foundation and with HKM. HKM not only supplied the plastic of their B-17F in 1:48th for us, but also produced, based on our design, a mold for conversion parts, allowing the construction of other versions from our modified kit, which differ from the original kit with later variations on the nose. But, it is also important what we did not go into within the scope of this project. That includes any modifications of real or perceived shape issues. We never do that with repackaged kits. The reason is quite simple. Such adjustments are not as simple as modelers imagine. We can replace some parts, make more accurate wheels, propellers or seats, but we cannot interfere with the shapes of the kit. Such partial adjustments always lead to some unsatisfactory compromise, where correcting one error can accentuate another. If there is a slightly thicker fuselage, a bad fuselage or wing profile, or a badly positioned engine nacelle, as in the case of HKM's B-17F, the only possible solution to such a problem is to make a new fuselage or a new wing, or both. However, the parts of the internal structure will no longer fit into it, because in the design of each kit, everything is intricately interconnected. In the end, we may as well just design and produce a whole new kit. I'm writing this because after the announcement of the project, the usual recommendations about everything that needs to be fixed began to come out. But that's not our goal, don't expect that from us. We will not carry out any comprehensive redesign of the HKM kit. In addition, we believe that HKM's B-17F kit is actually of very high quality and its possible inaccuracies are not out of the realm of errors found in other leading manufacturers' kits. So we start from the HKM kit and must respect its attributes, with all possible errors. It is the principle that allows us to work with moldings of other manufacturers and build our projects based on them, which, despite certain shortcomings, are very successful commercially and interesting for modelers. I believe that most modelers understand this principle and that our new project will make them happy despite its, in my opinion, small shortcomings.

 It's the same with the selection of markings. We have selected seven of the many interesting 100th BG machines, or eleven included as a subscription bonus. Modelers are proposing other options, but it is already too late for them, or they have been dropped from the selection for some, usually technical, reason. But in general, it's like an election; there are many candidates, but few openings. I already explained that the selection of options for the color schemes of individual kits is not the result of an ad hoc lottery. Each kit has a paint selection committee of usually four, but sometimes five or six, who carefully consider each inclusion in the marking options guide. The selection is a three-round process, in the last round the balance of the composition of the selected aircraft is evaluated in terms of the variability of markings and camouflage schemes, the service of the aircraft in different theatres of operations or with different units. With Bloody Hundredth, the choice was specific, because the kit is dedicated to only one unit and thus only shows a certain slice of the wider history, but that does not mean that the choice was easy. On the contrary, a similar type of building block usually demands a lot of work.

 Modelers and especially reviewers usually downplay the marking options in our kits, sort of taking it for granted and don't deal with it too much in their evaluations. They usually just spout off the inclusions of these options and that’s it. Once upon a time it was different, there was a time when reviewers had a lot of comments about our color schemes. Ever since we changed our style and put more care into creating color guides, I feel like reviewers are ignoring them. As if the choice and quantity of color schemes had no bearing on the quality of the kit, as if the range of this offering and the size of the decal sheet had no value. I'm sorry, because I think that the options offered are quite important for the quality of the kit. Honestly, who today will offer you eleven marking options in a kit, several of them in two variants, in addition to a beautifully rendered historical background describing the machine and its crew? I dare say no one. And I'm not talking about the size and scope of the decal sheet. There are three decal sheets in the Bloody Hundredth, all large format.

 If you are hesitating, you have a few weeks to think about it. The sale will run in several rounds. The first round is a pre-order on our e-shop, which will start on June 6th and end on June 20th. Some merchants have also launched their own pre-orders. After the end of the pre-orders, the sale will continue from the second half of July in the standard way, where we will deliver the kit to our merchants and distributors and it will be available to them as an August new release. We will be selling them at the IPMS USA Nats in Madison between July 17th and 20th. The remaining kits will also be available from our e-shop. So if any kits remain at all by August, it looks like the entire shipment will be sold within a few weeks.

 You will find only basic information about The Bloody Hundredth 1943 project in today's issue. More information about the kit and the 100th BG will be made available as smaller, detailed historical notebooks about the aircraft and the unit at the end of next week.

Articles

 The main historical article this month is Tom Cleaver's Mustangs in the Battle of Normandy on the P-51B's role during and after the invasion. There is also another continuation of the Air Battle over Ukraine by Mira Barič, and an article on the Iranian attack on Israel. The issue also contains a technical article on the use of an ultrasonic knife in model making by Ladislav Jareš and a report from the competition in Čáslav. Of course, there are the now traditional Boxart Stories, today dedicated to the cover images of the June kit releases – the Marauder, Spitfire Mk.Vb, Bf 109 G-6 and the Fw 190 A-2.

The Iron Bunny slugfest is in the books, and the judges are scoring six beautifully built Mustangs, all with unbuttoned engines. While the Mustang as the competition model did not surprise them and they kind of expected it, the engine did raise some eyebrows. The engine is not slated for release til August, so the competition teams received pre-production pieces. So, these were a sort of test, and I got plenty of advice on how to improve it!

Happy Modelling!

Vladimir Sulc