ICM Holdings are to release a 1/48th U-2/Po-2, WWII Soviet Multi-Purpose Aircraft.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

I wonder if it is re-pop of the Gavia kit?

Hi Warren

It looks like a new tool. Exciting news.

All the best

Rowan

Always interested in new & unusual 1/48 scale WW11 era kits.

While doing some research on this for possible inclusion in a diorama I found this.

". . .The prototype of the U-2, powered by a 74 kW (99 hp) Shvetsov M-11 air-cooled five cylinder radial engine, first flew on 7 January 1928 piloted by M.M. Gromov. Aircraft from the pre-production series were tested at the end of 1928 and serial production started in 1929 in Factory Nr 23 in Leningrad. Production in the Soviet Union ended in 1953, but license-built CSS-13 were still produced in Poland until 1959. . ."

Not that I dislike this release intensely (the Gavia kit had some minor hard if hard to fix flaws, like cockpit openings that were too large), but I really question just how exciting this release is, given the existing Gavia kit: The upcoming Do-215 (and promised, but not delivered, Il-4) are the biggest mainstream WWII kits to come out in this scale for a long time (getting on to a decade), and not much else has come out, even of this modest size, in the past three (3) decades... The J7W is another example: Just how long can this scale remain a single-engine only scale and not be a dead end?: Was it urgent to re-thread the Po-2 whose "absence" absolutely nobody was complaining about?

The recent Revell Ventura was larger, but unfortunately was almost the same kind of "disconnected" release, and now that the initial excitement has worn off, notice it has mostly disappeared from build logs...

This year the two Spitfires were two great releases, but one was an odd gunless variant and there really wasn't much else...

I am also dubious about the sales potential of a biplane... Being a mass-produced aircraft, with a lot of schemes, I can't complain, but I am puzzled... To me these look like "on the side" employee pet projects, while the real business is going on elsewhere...

Gaston

Hi Gaston

Well, I'm glad you don't dislike it intensely LOL! (heaven forbid!) - but, as one of the most iconic aircraft of all time, with over 40,000 built, I'm excited to see it.


- But you are. Your whole post is one long moan! LOL! As I've said before, I do worry that you've picked the wrong hobby - and are set for nothing but a world of disappointment.

Unless, of course, you're just pulling everyone's tail for the fun of it...

All the best

Rowan

I have to admit I am much happier now that I've turned to 1/350 scale ships, an area comparatively bubbling with life...

Am I really the only one who is tired of 30 years of single engine planes? As I've said before, in 1/350 that would be like 30 years of nothing but PT boats and submarines...

Maybe not for jets, but as far as WWII is concerned, this scale looks increasingly like those walled-off dead mall corridors...: You know those where the store fronts are blanked-off and painted, to look like there was never supposed to be a store there...

I don't know if you remember, but back when the original Gavia Po-2 was released, around ten years ago, it came with a lot of incredibly intricate photo-etch, and was quite an expensive and exciting release (it generated some truly great builds): Yet nobody called it exciting back then because there was way too much else going on...

Things really have gone downhill since then, at least for the non-blowtorches...

The Il-4: Now THAT is an exciting release... I hope it doesn't come out two years down the line, when it was supposed to be out last Summer... One can only hope it will not be anything like the Tu-2 they did either, as that was what we keep getting now: Chinese Non-release releases...

Gaston

P.S. I finally understand now what Hasegawa has been doing since they quit 1/48th WWII aircrafts in late 2008: 1/350 WWII Ships! And they are great!

G.

Hi Gaston

The main thing is to remember that modelling is supposed to be fun - so I wish you a degree of happiness with your ships that sadly seems to elude you with aircraft.

All the best

Rowan

I is Gawia
https://aeroscale.kitmaker.net/forums/185987#1554876

I must be in the minority when it comes to 1/48 scale releases over the past few years. Mosquitos, P-38s even Arado 234s and Ta154s are multi engine kits that I have owned or would like to own..

Gaston you must not see what is released outside single engine subjects.

As for this kit, while it doesn't have the appeal of a 109 or Mustang it can be modeled as an Eastern Front nuisance raider or even as a Bedcheck Charlie machine from Korea.

It's a biplane , good enough for me !






Terri

All these twin engines you cite indeed exist, but all are very small twins, and all are over ten years old, and in fact nearly twenty years old in some cases... It seems to me one of the uses of a scale is to use different size objects to show the relative scale, and that can't happen if all the subjects are of roughly the same size...

This is what dawned on me when I moved to 1/350 scale ships: The immense variety in size of the subjects. Even the choices Hasegawa has been making in 1/350 have been stellar in my opinion: An unexpected cargo ship and a small liner with several functions, and, even better, one of those ubiquitous but unglamorous escort carriers, the Gambier Bay, instead of those endless boring big carriers...: This is like picking, within your first ten kits, an unglamorous subject like the Po-2, but with, in addition, the interest of a significant size variation to other carriers... In 1/48th that would be like an unglamorous C-46 or C-54...

Will we ever see a C-54 or C-46, or any kind of other large transport in 1/48th, instead of the endless fare of single engine types? I am beginning to doubt it, as this scale seems withered by years of low online sales volumes and especially by the 1/32 scale revival. All of this won't allow for a large investment in new moulds (even to some extent in China).

This is sad because 1/32 is much more limited in terms of the subject size variation that is practical to represent, and even 1/48th was already at the outer limit.

Too bad anyway the Po-2 is not new tool: I hope they saved their ressources for something more exciting than the Do-215, which wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted more "multi-engines" types!... Like most, I wasn't really that much aware there even was a Do-215... There is some truly obscure market research going on in 1/48, I gotta tell you...

Gaston

Just great to have a Po-2 on market. It's one of soviet's most important aircrafts in early war times.

Can't understand Gaston. Most of modelers are not tried of single aisle a/c kits, because they first love airplanes and in that way come to modeling. And where is the point on how many engines an aircraft has?
Second point is the statement about hasegawa : i'm pretty shure the way they decide rule the hard market with a lot or competition with other companies. They have to focus on RC market, which is their advantage.

Also can't understand a guy who critisizes every airplane model for any possible incorrectness which nobody ever would notice, when he says, he prefers now 1/350 ships. Come on, i've never seen any full accurate ship model on market. Can't take it seriously anymore.

Hi Gaston

Says who? The parts in the CAD images (there's also a clue in the fact that there are CAD images...) look very different to my old Gavia kit.

All the best

Rowan

So I suppose Trumpeter's recent Grumman Albatross is chopped liver? And granted it's "small" but what about their freshly announced Westland Whirlwind?

Gaston, if you're going to rant, how about at least injecting a few facts? Your inaccuracies are much too easy to disprove, and tend to make you look foolish.

If the conclusion is that modellers should migrate to wherever the most (new) variety is... Then we'd all be making ridiculous anime resin and giant robots.

I'm sorry but trying to find a grand industry/political justification for moving to 1/350 ships... Gaston, every decision in life needn't be an over-intellectualized quagmire. You like ships now. That's all. You didn't read the death of quarterscale in your tea leaves. You just started liking ships.

I thought a previous poster here meant the mould "Is Gavia" (see post above). Sorry about that.

As for the comment that 1/350 ship kits are worse than 1/48th aircrafts, that is almost too absurd to elaborate on... I've just noticed today that my Hasegawa 1/48th FW-190A-5, the best FW-190A kit there is, and my best effort so far, is STILL low on its right wing and is thus crooked, despite huge extensive efforts to raise that stupid right wing to match the left wing (AM's Il-2 is similar but even worse)... This after experience on at least four previous identical kits, and carving and bending the plastic extensively to raise that right wing...:



Oh, and you can't see it here, but the fin originally also comes twisted to the left (on all 8 kits I have seen), but was bent straight here, so what you see above is not as bas as what it actually looks like OOB...

This may account why 90-95% of aircraft models I typically see at shows are not just crooked, but badly crooked. This has gotten worse recently: On my last show, there was not a SINGLE straight tailplanes-to-main-wings aircraft in all the 1/48th categories, around 50 kits in all, including one of the two I brought unfortunately (my tailplanes did match, but it was the main wing itself that was crooked)...

Don't judge ships by what Trumpeteer brings out: I've assembled four Hasegawa and Fujimi hulls so far, and they all have SIX to TWELVE bulkheads for the sole purpose to ensure stiffness and straightness: When was the last time you saw ten solid bulkheads in an aircraft kit to ensure symmetry? Not one of these hulls has turned out crooked so far...

As far as details go, even a 40 year old Nichimo 1/200 Destroyer has detail that makes most recent aircraft releases look like they originated from the stone age (although I found out the one-piece hulls of the Kagero and Yamato to be assymetrical: Nichimo's two-piece hull kits are fine)...

For that matter, Revell's 1/196 Constitution, a mould dating from 1956(!!), is perfectly symmetrical and has layered 3-D overlapping plating detail that has had NO equal since... Let me tell you: Aircraft surface details have a long way to go to reach the level of ship kits of the Eisenhower administration...

I'm guessing the people at Zoukei-Mura noticed the inherent, and terminal, crookedness of most thin-skinned aircraft kits, which is why they went for the full internal structure... The way around that is to mould the skin in thicker plastic, which Monogram understood well enough to do in its day, with thinness just around the open edges... Good sound thinking... Although they made quite a few unfit-to-fly assymmetrical "hangar queens" of their own, it had nothing to do with their basic concept...

More often the trend has been towards thinner-skinned aircraft kits, which means that in many cases the crookedness has gotten worse (and this even in Tamiya's 1/32 kits, if what I saw at shows is any guide)... If not because of the kit alone, then because of the builder or the complexity of the multi-part assembly... Here, on this 1/48th Ki-61 (by Boroda Rus), it is the kit's fault, and in several Ki-61 kits I have barely managed once to get that left wing top straight without causing a dimple or twisting the trailing edge:



It is basically impossible to get that wing straight...

Which reminds me of the wonderful Hasegawa Stuka, and its mould-ballooned wingtops, too much of an unfixable classic to pass up:



Mind you, I will still make the extraodinary claim that there are a few inherently straight aircraft kits... Now let me get back to you if they are also accurate on top of that...

But of course, no one has noticed this, so rest assured this means it doesn't exist at all: I am just making things up, and therefore I look forward to see table-fulls of crooked aircrafts in future shows for decades to come... Fortunately I'll be in the ship aisle by then...

Gaston

Gaston I commend you on having the most accurate eyes in modelling.....

I for one, couldn't tell if a model was "crooked" to use your words from the distance that most models are viewed at the vast majority of shows.

Don't confuse a bent fuselage with one that has it's fin and rudder offset in one direction to counteract the torque of the engine. Without getting scientific I know that all of my 109 kits in various scale have an offset fin and rudder for that fact and I don't need to resort to plans to work that out.

Jessie pointed out that there is a new Grumman Albatross kit out at the moment and Trumpeter have announced a Whirlwind in 48th scale. They both appeal to me as they are great subjects that will appeal to a large group of people.

On the Zoukei Mura kits, the internal structure is present in these kits to provide the modeller with a chance to open the kit up and show off it's internal structure, it has nothing or very little to do with alignment and rigidity of the kits themselves. If that was the case, how did Tamiya pull off the 32nd scale Mustang without it falling apart once complete?

Feel free to start building 350th scale ships, but please don't pontificate on your endless and at times very hopeless quest for complete accuracy.....

I truly do enjoy reading your post's, Gaston. You bring up points that I know no one else would. However, I don't believe anyone else cares about such intense accuracy.

I have the Hasegawa Stuka waiting in the stash. Now I shall not sleep wondering if the wings are "mould-balloned". Please say no more. Perhaps you should just take a kit as the plastic it is. Your worrying yourself into an asylum, if your not already writing your post's from there already.

I can't wait for Gaston to take a micrometer to a PE sheet to check the diameter, height and spacing of the handrails!

Give him a chance, he's only started building ships.........

;)

Hi again

Could someone remind me how we got to the USS Constitution from the Po-2? (On the other hand - please don't...)

All the best

Rowan

Hmmmm, perhaps we need to coin a phrase.

The thread has become very Gastonvoluted ?

We could coin a new verb and declare that the thread has been Gastoned.

Excerpted from the New Aeroscale Dictionary
Gaston vt To hijack a thread into irrelevancies, inaccuracies and often to completely unrelated topics. Frequently accompanied by crudely altered photographs which fail to prove assertions made in the thread.

e.g. "My Po 2 thread was Gastoned and we ended up discussing the USS Constitution."