Editorial

Dear Friends,

 Hard to believe, but once again, instead of a significant, interesting and hopefully previously unreleased type of aircraft, we have released another out of God knows how many Spitfires. So it looks as though we have missed another opportunity; if we weren't such die-hard lovers of boring and uninteresting Spitfires, we could have released, for example, a Sea Vixen, preferably in the D.3 version and in 1:48 scale. Well, what can you do? It is what it is. We are sticking to our plan, which is to reduce all the kits that we have released so far, and will release, in 1:48 scale to 1:72. This is not an easy plan. In fact, it is very likely an unachievable plan, as you surely can understand. It's kind of like the hare that never catches up with the tortoise, but we are doing what we can. You can see the new Spitfire Mk.Vb is part of this effort, but you can also just forget about trying to see any complete sense in it and just enjoy this Spitfire kit, because it is a damn nice and fun little item. After all, it is not a rehash of old kits, it is the first in the family of 72nd scale Spitfires to include the Mk.I, II and V and it is a new project that has almost nothing in common with the older Mk.IX and Mk.VIII Spits. Yes, of course it is a Spitfire, and these are versions that preceded the Nines and Eights in terms of development, but with these kits it is the other way around. In our case, the Mk.IX kits precede the Mk.V and Mk.I, and we are somehow going against the flow of time, and this speaks well for the new kits. The biggest weakness of the Mk.IX (and VIII) kits is the small parts. Twelve years ago, we had the molds for them made in China, it was part of a project with which we wanted to increase the production capacity of our 1:72nd scale line by having the molds containing sprues with small parts made in China. It was a very adventurous affair, we carried out the plan to the end and we actually made the molds for two kits, the Spitfire Mk.IX and the Fw 190 A, in China. We made the fuselage and wing parts, and main airframe parts, ourselves, and a tool shop in China made the small parts for us. But I will not specifically say that this was successful, it was a typical Pyrrhic victory, the molds were far from our standard and you can see it in the moldings. To tell the truth, I have never stopped regretting this result. But I won't burden you with that story today, you can read it in time in my Plastos series about the history of plastic kit production in Bohemia, which is being published in our EMD journal. The important fact for today is that the Spitfire Mk.Vb in 1:72 is 100% Eduard, and that can be seen in the kit’s quality. But it's not just about the small parts, of which there are quite a bit, because the Spitfire simply had a lot of development variants, a feature it shares with the Bf 109 F and G, and we, because we want to make the kits to the highest standard possible with the full knowledge of the fact that we won't please everyone anyway. Some reviewer will always write somewhere that the kits are complicated and that Tamiya kits go together easier and quicker, which is of course true and we won't contest that, or some other expert will complain that the eighth incarnation of the propeller is missing, a fundamental flaw, because it was on Spitfires operating from the grass strip in Beersheba causing him a lifelong trauma. Which is, of course, absurd, but it’s nothing that we would worry about, either. If you want to find fault with those small parts, I'll give you some advice. There are tiny holes in the exhausts. Quite a few holes, just like on the 48th scale Spitfire Mk.V. Unfortunately, we can't eliminate those holes, so we have no choice but to ask for your indulgence. Either fill them in, or leave them there, or don't buy the kit. But that actually be a shame, the rest of the kit is very nice and we give you a number of small parts there two or three times, just in case, as so often does happen, your tweezers send a small part into oblivion, never to be heard from again. Consider it compensation for the problem with the exhausts.

But, you know, it's not just about the small parts. The airframe parts have also undergone development, after all, our technological capabilities, regardless of the holes on the side of the exhausts, have advanced considerably over the last decade, and it seriously shows. There are also subtle, raised rivets on the rear of the fuselage, quite a rarity for 72nd scale I would say, and although they are not completely visible at first or second glance and can be easily overlooked, they are charming and if you decently highlight them, you will have a very nice model in your display case. As is customary with us, you have a decent number of color versions to choose from, and if someone wants to write to me again that the decals have thick paint, shifted registration, faded colors, and that we should return to using Cartograf for our decals, please don't. We will not return to using Cartograf decals, because we never put them in our Profipack and Weekend kits anyway. They also do not have thick ink layers and they are not off-register and the colors are also fine. I admit that we have not quite hit the mark on some of the shades in the past, but we are trying not to repeat those mistakes. You can find out what the kit looks like, how it is built and what to look out for in an article by Jakub Nademlejnsky. If you want to refresh your knowledge of technical history, today we also offer you a repeat of my article on the technical development of the Spitfire Mk.V. Today is the first part, dedicated to the Spitfire Mk.Va and Mk.Vb, and in the January issue of the newsletter there will be a second part dedicated to the Spitfire Mk.Vc. We have already published that article once, sometime in 2020 I think, at the premiere of the Spitfire Mk.I, II and V kits in 1:48th scale. We decided to repeat it because, firstly, repetition is the mother of wisdom, and secondly, the information may be useful to someone who may have missed the first time around. After all, the demographic of modelers building in 72nd differs from that building 48th, even though the two partially overlap. I promise that sometime in the spring I will also write an article about the development of Spitfire Mk.V camouflage schemes. We will publish these articles as we publish various versions of the 72nd scale Spits. As I have already mentioned, we are publishing them somewhat against the flow of time, starting with the Mk.V and ending with the Mk.I, which is a different procedure than we chose for the 48th scale line. However, both when it comes to the selection of color versions for the 72nd scale kits, and when it comes to the release scheme, where there will again be a number of theme based Limited Edition kits, the smaller kits essentially following the release pattern and marking options of their larger predecessors. In this case, we are starting with the mk.V because we want to avoid a collision with our colleagues from IBG, who have recently started releasing Spitfire Mk.I kits, also in 1:72 scale, and we do not want to interfere with them. If, due to the lack of international coordination, it turned out that we and they produce the same type of aircraft. I wanted to write the same thing, but they are not the same kits. We have our similarities, but you will find marked differences.

If you are wondering why we premiered the entire Spitfire Mk.I to V family as a Profipack kit this time around, it is because we wanted to have it ready by the beginning of November so that we would be able to have it at Telford. In the end, that didn't work out, it was a too ambitious plan, in the end we were two weeks short of completing the final form and thus the entire kit. But we managed to get two more kits to Telford, the Limited Edition Kittyhawk in 1:48th scale and the Spitfire Mk.Vb Mid in the 1:48 Profipack line. Both kits are also December releases, as is the A6M2-N Rufe in the Weekend line, also in 48th. You can see them all in today's newsletter, unless of course you have already seen them on our Facebook page or perhaps over the weekend in Bratislava. So I assume that you have already seen them somewhere, but we will show them to you again here, just in case.

But I am afraid that today is not all good news. One bit of bad news is related to my mention of the Plastos series, where I made mention of using Chinese sources for some mold production in our 72nd scale kits. Many of you will not be familiar with this line of articles, since not everyone subscribes to the EMD. That's the problem. Few modelers subscribe to the EMD, while it costs us a lot of effort to prepare and publish it. The result is that it's not worth it for us and we'd rather devote that effort to something more successful. So the EMD is ending, the last issue will be published in January. Subscribers will receive an email with information on how we will settle their subscriptions. However, because everything bad is for something good, EMD will not disappear completely. We will return to the original idea that it will be a paid supplement to our regular newsletter. We will transfer articles that are of interest to it, and this will also apply to Plastos. We will explain how it will all look and work after the New Year.

Not wanting to end on a sour note, I will end on a high one. We're finishing with the Alien. You know what that’s about, right? This was a Czech Mi-24V with an absolutely wicked Alien-inspired paint scheme We've been working on this project for a long time, so long that you may have lost faith that we'd ever finish it, but we will. If anyone wants to protest that we're cooperating with Russia’s Zvezda company, which supports Putin's regime and the war against Ukraine, and that we're pretty fake when we profess to support Ukraine, let's be clear, we support Ukraine, we haven't given up and won't give up articles about the air war in Ukraine despite various attacks and hate mail, as you can see on the other pages of today's newsletter, and we don't do business with Zvezda. We just have some pre-war stampings still hidden away, and those are the ones that will be used. We have about 1,000 of them walled up on the first floor of our sprue warehouse, and we think it's time to open that wall and use the what is stored there. By the way, Alien is currently fighting in Ukraine in the ranks of the Ukrainian Air Force. Because we have a limited number of molds, this kit will not be sold via the usual channels, it will only be sold via subscription. Not all retailers will get it either. Another thing you should know is that it will be an expensive kit. Not because we are greedy, but because it is a demanding and expensive project, both in terms of design and production. Given the nature of its colori scheme, it will be a demanding project even for potential builders, getting that decal on the model will require skill, experience and patience. Those decals will be specific not only in their design, but also in their technical implementation – I won’t tell you that now, you can find it in the information about the kit’s contents when the pre-order offer kicks in. It will start on December 12th and end on Christmas Eve, December 24th. Definitely something to look forward to!

And with that, friends and modelers, I want to thank you all for your support, friendship, praise and criticisms of the past year, and I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a very prosperous New Year!

Happy Modeling!

Vladimir Sulc

PS. I shouldn’t forget to mention that our traditional and very popular New Year’s PE greeting will again be available from our e-shop.