I ask because to me they are under detailed, made from thick plastic, and are all around a "heavy" kit because the plastic is kind of weighty?

Anybody here like the kits?

~Chip :-)

Hi Chip: I think you have to take them with a grain of salt. I am in canada and alot of small stores will carry cheap hobbycraft kits. So for one thing they are readily available for me. When I got back into modeling i started on 9.99 1/48 aircraft from HC. The decals are terrible, detail is lacking and the fit isn't all that great. BUT...i was able to buy and build a fleet of 109's spits and hurricanes for the price of 1 high end model. Some of the newer kits are a bit better than others, but overall for the price (6.99 USD) I don't mind them.

I've got to agree with Chip on this one. The plastic is very brittle and hard. I also noticed that the F-82 Twin Mustang seemed to be a direct copy of the Monogram kit. The fit of the kits always seemed to be a little off.

It seems the old Matchbox kits were better fitting and were real cheap when I was growing up.

I swore Hobbycraft kits off a few years ago. However, I will try them when they release the 1/48 Cougar. Hopefully, they will contain markings for VF-61 Jolly Rogers.

I did the Dornier DO17 and the F82 twin mustang is still wrapped.

Similar the the MPM brand, they require alot of fitting and putty. But they are cheap.. I like them so I can hone my skills for a high end Tamiya/Haseaga kits..., experiment..

Now, even worse in detail, quality, the is LTD models

I got a Yak from LTD, and it sucks, but it was the only deal Ii could find. Actually it should look pretty good when I am finished!

~Chip :-)

personally, like HobbyCraft. There kits may be a bit tough to build and long in the tooth on detail (early hobbycraft kits!!!!), but I really like how they keep releasing different things that do not exist on the market. They had several kits out in production before anyone else even really took them seriously. I am thinking back to the AR-234 and the Hawker Sea Fury as well as the CF-105 arrow. Not stellar kits by any stretch of the imagination, but unique and really gave a good basis for modelers to try new things and techniques without breaking the bank. They were sort of put in the dark with thier A-4 series because it was delayed and released only weeks before Hasegawa put there kit out. But thekits are really quite good for the price, and you get enough extra ordinance to arm another aircraft. I also like how they release thier kits the full production run of a series like the Me-109 or A-4. the entire production series was availiable as soon as the kit was released. Really lots of opportunities. I have cursed a few words about thier tough construction, but have had some really good results in the end. Looking forward to the cougar and other releases they put out!
Lee

About 12 years ago I was in Canada and bought one of their Sea Fury kits to bring back to England. I'd never heard of Hobbycraft so I thought I'd check one out. Although a bit basic I thought they weren't bad for the price, except when I came to applying the decals. Man, they were stronger than the plastic! I must have used half a bottle of decal solution to get them to sit in the panel lines. If I hadn't just come back from holiday and was broke I would have looked for some diferent decals but was stuck with the ones in the kit.

Brandy hits the nail on the head. The decals are terrible! They just don't want to settle down into panel lines and for me at least they don't want to take dullcoat. The same technique I use to do decals with revell, testors, tamyia etc won't work with HC. I can live with less detail on a cheap model, but after all the fiddling to get everything to fit correctly, it is dissapointing to see the decals go on poorly. Plus have you ever noticed that the parts are very warped?

Well, from a perverse standpoint, I actually like a lot of the Hobbycraft kits. The Corsair may be 3/16ths of an inch too short behind the firewall (if you don't believe me, check one out against a Tamiya 1/48 F4U) and the Vampires may lack dihedral.

But despite those failings - or maybe even because of them - I happened to enjoy the liberating feeling of splicing in a new fuselage section on the Corsair and actually getting a decent-looking U-Bird for half the cost of a Tamiya F4U. And splicing in some .020 strip along the lower wing joint of the Vampire wing and readjusting the fit of booms and wing roots accordingly was pretty rewarding - again at a low cost except for some he-man modeling.

The Avia S199 is beautiful in the box and matches rather well to general points of the Revell-Monogram Bf 109G-10.

I've heard that decals in the later Hobbycraft releases aren't all that bad either.

HTH

I have bought two seperate kits from Hobbycraft.I have the 1/48 Su-27 and all it is is the Academy kit.They just did a copy of it and a very poor copy at that.The other kit I hae is thier 1/48 F-4E Thunderbird.Now that is a good kit.Almost like Monogram quality.Not Revell but the old Monogram stuff.