Here's a look at Special Hobby's recent kit of the Il-10, follow-up to their earlier B-33.

Link to Item



If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Hmmm.. One side of the fuselage shorter than the other, and they knew about it. No, I am sorry but that is not good enough even for a short-run company. I think 75% is way too generous, Rowan. If it was something small I would say OK, but something as major as the fuselage, that is unforgiveable. Just my opinion.

I agree with Warren - the 2 fuselage halves don't match (nor are the same length!) and yet it still gets 75% and an overall "recommended"? You should not have to pay this sort of money for a newly tooled kit and then start deciding which parts of it you need to chop up and insert plugs etc. just to get it right. Surely that was the design team's job?

Remaining on that topic, I can't believe no one at the company test built the kit before release and having done so, they clearly thought "Oh well.....it will just have to do." That is quite an arrogant and breath-taking attitude to adopt to your potential customer base; especially given our access to sites such as this and others on the net.

There are far too many great kits (and so little time) to even consider buying a kit that has clearly been seriously bodged.

Gary

Hi all,

I don't have a problem with the review and I think that 75% is more than fair. Rowan's average rating is 85% so this is way below than usual for him. There is one big problem with the kit and it has been pointed out. I think the readers can decide for themselves if they will buy the kit or not and that's the most important aspect of a review. Personally I think Rowan and Steffen Arndt (but you have to read german) write the best aircraft model kit web reviews and I'm always happy to know what they are thinking of a new release.




They do test build the kits (it has to be done at least to do the instructions) and no they are not arrogant at all. I can assure you of the latter fact! Their kits are designed by freelance people (mostly modelers) and produced with technologies which require plain old craftsman skills and are not computer generated toolings like the Tamigawa or even Eduard designs.

When I visited their factory early this year, a test build of their Breda Ba.65 kit was laying around half build so I have asked them how the fit was. I expected to hear that it was their best kit to date, the usual bla bla, but I was told in a very frank way, that the kit was not perfect and that there were fit issues! Surely not an arrogant way to praise their kits. While they do their best to produce the best possible kits, it is simply not possible with the technologies they currently use. Does this mean they shouldn't bring them on the market? I don't think so as it would reduce the list of aircraft available as plastic model kits in a dramatic way!




I don't think it is "seriously bodged". It seems as if the correction is not beyond the capabilities of an experienced model builder for whom such short run kits are designed for. But you are right, there are indeed many kits that are far better than this one and building them all would take several lives... but sadly no 1:48 scale Il-10...

Jean-Luc

Cheers guys

It's nice to see a Review trigger a bit of a discussion.

Too generous? Well, everyone says I'm a generous type of guy but, seriously, every time I thought of a score, I kept coming back to the 70-75% region. I feel to have marked it lower would be to ignore the positive aspects of the model.

My outlook on such kits is probably influenced by my experience building vacuforms and early short-run models 20 or so years ago, where far, far worse problems were commonplace and sorting them out was just par for the course. As I said in the review, expectations of the quality of such kits have risen massively - perhaps slighlty unrealistically in my view.




Really? I don't think I used the word "recommended" anywhere in the Review, not even to say "recommended for experienced modellers only". But I'll go back and check, because I didn't intend to.

They always say a picture's worth a thousand words. This is the extent of the problem - not what I'd exactly call the end of the world, or anything that's beyond most experienced modellers:



Anyway, I actually think the IL-10 is a kit that begs to be built. (OK - call me a masochist! ) If I can get some time at the workbench in the New Year I'll tackle The Beast - a fitting name, if ever there was one! We'll see if I stick by my 75% by the end...

It's funny that Jean-Luc should mention the Ba.65... that's my next Review. I found the basic test-fit very good - except for some nasty gaps at the wing-roots.

All the best

Rowan

Hi Rowan and Jean - Luc,

Clearly chaps I think we will have to agree to disagree on this topic but that's what having a forun and debating chamber is all about isn't it.

Firstly Rowan - I accept you never used the (actual) word "Recommended" in your review and I am sorry if you felt misrepresented - sorry! That said, a 75% grading and the words "definately be worth the effort" consititutes a "recommendation" in my book not just for a model kit but for pretty much anything else!

I accept the 'limited run' argument to a degree ......but Special Hobby are not charging a 'limited' price at EURO 40 are they? And for a kit where they cannot even get the 2 fuselage halves the same size. If it were, say, half that price I would say 'fair enough' but if they are going to charge Tamigawa prices for a large(ish) 1/48 WW2 aircraft model, then I think modellers are not being unreasonable asking them to at least get the basic kit part measurements right!

Bottom line, people can vote with their wallets irresepctive of our individual submissions and in any event Rowan, thanks for the review and saving me 40 Euro by identifying this issue before I bought it.

More money now redirected to the "Wingnuts Fund"!

Best regards.
Gary

Hi Gary

Well, I think the kit will be worth the effort - I've seen some fantastic finished builds of the previous B-33 - but whether that counts as a "recommendation" is something we'll have to agree to disagree on.

I only try to give readers the information they need to form their own opinion of a kit, so if my review has saved you 40 Euros on a kit you'd have been disappointed with, I'd call it a job well done.

All the best

Rowan

If the excess left fuselage lenght, as shown in Rowan's picture, is the only "fit" problem, then lambasting this kit because you have to saw shorter the left fuselage is not warranted. The instructions should point this out to warn the modeler, but perhaps it is too embarrassing for them to do it...

In these kinds of things you have to get beyond appearances and look at the actual substance of the problem: It is an embarassing-LOOKING error, but look at other manufacturer's mistakes: They may "seem" better, but are actually quite troublesome in their own right: Accurate Miniatures Il-2s build consistently to me with a anhedral to the wings, that is, the wings are not a straight line accross the top from wingtip to wingtip: Unless someone can prove to me the wingtop surface does point down a little towards the wingtips, I have to say this completely screwed my Il-2s TWICE, and I see no solutions at all in the kit's very peculiar and inconvenient wingroot design and complex three-piece bottom wing...

Also the AM kit's IL-2 spinner is very far from bulged enough, and the propeller blades are ridiculously thin and pointy...

Note I still consider the Il-2 to be, by far, Accurate Miniature's most accurate 1:48th post-1942 WWII kit... I don't think much of the accuracy of their Avengers and Dautlesses and especially their Yaks...

I did find the Squadron price for the SH IL-10s to be very high, but if one fuselage half lenght, without other symmetry issues, is all that prevents you from building an accurate model, a lot of other companies have been doing a lot worse than Special Hobby and are getting high praise for it... I could go on with Tamiya's P-47s here, but I'll leave that for later...

I have the SH Barracuda, and it is very accurate in both fuselage outline and cross -section, unlike several drawings of the subject I have seen, and it is in fact one of the better 1:48th kits I have seen, barring the fact I did not start it as of yet...

While the mismatching fuselage halves length is an embarrassing error, the perspective I have on this is always: How good are the clear parts? People often go on about errors that are sometimes easily fixable, but serious clear part errors are never easily fixable, and any such error (like on the much-vaunted Tamiya P-47Ds, or even worse on the AM Avengers) is actually much harder to fix than almost anything on a worse-seeming kit that has got at least the clear parts right...

Gaston

Please don't bother, you have bored me enough already.
Andy

Hi Gaston and Rowan.

Rowan - Cheers mate!

Gaston - Some fair points and all I am trying to say (maybe not too well?) is that someone at S.H. must have been aware of the fault...so why not just fix it? A single (for me significant) fix that detracts from maybe an otherwise good package must surely have been within their abilities? I'm not a rivet counter nor do I fuss about angles being off by fractions of degrees nor scale inches etc - but perhaps i'm just being old fashioned in expecting the kit parts that mate to BOTH be of the same size?

On a final note, if the mismatching halves are no deal breaker, then perhaps S.H. may like to point it out on the outside of the box or in their advertising literature? We both know the answer to that!

I'm just glad we modelers can learn of these things on well run and informative sites like this one rather than reaching for the liquid poly and exclaiming "W.T.F ?" ... AFTER we have parted with out hard-earned folding.

A good chat and no rants or nasty comments - thanks to all involved!

Gary

Hi Gary,




I think the simple answer is that it would be too cost effective to correct this (small?) fault. We are speaking of kits which are produced in the 2000 to 5000 exemplar range (maybe even less for this boxing).




Give me the name of one manufacturer who do this? According to Gaston, Accurate Miniature should do it for most of their kits, Tamiya for their P-47 and Storch and Italeri should have published a list for their 1:48 scale Reggiane 2002 or their Arado 196. Trumpeter could do the same for most of their 1:32 scale stuff and even in 1:48 scale (Hellcat!). Does Revell write on their box that the kit inside is an old mold from the 60' with raised panel lines, loads of rivets and no interior detail whatsoever?

We don't receive samples directly from Tamiya, Hasegawa, Italeri, Trumpeter and Revell. But we receive some from MPM (Special Hobby) for review. So maybe they don't write the faults of their kits on their box, but at least they send them away for review so that they are pointed out by qualified model kit reviewers. So we are back to the topic: the purpose a review which is to inform the reader of the quality of a kit. In this case I think it worked well.

By the way, I too think that this is an interesting discussion...

Jean-Luc