Just thought I would post up this little idea and see if it flies.

The hope is that if there is enough demand and if people from the kit companies are reading this post the thing might take flight.

I would dearly love to have a 1/48 scale Martinsyde elephant to add to my collection but there aren't any out there. I would even be happy to pay a deposit for 2 kits (at a reasonable price) if it helped to bring the kit into existence. I reckon limited run kits are usually around 350 plus kits so if more than 350 or so folks are interested or even 175 folks wanting two kits each it just might be of interest to one of the manufacturers.

I guess companies won't take a risk on producing kits they can't be sure will make a profit or at least pay for themselves so maybe Eduard etc. could even have a place on their site where you could go and express a desire for a particular kit (or accessory/modification set) with a view to it achieving sufficient support in order for it to be put into development.

Anyway I thought I would try it and see what happens so I would appreciate it if anyone who would like this model would show their support by replying to this post.

Just say if you want one and, if more than one how many.

Thanks all

What about Wingnut Wings?

Have you contacted them and asked?

They might get inspired to put together an Elephant kit, perhaps in 1/32 scale.

Afraid Wignut wings are out of my range both on scale and price. I find 1/72 a bit too small for comfort with my aging eyes and giant hands and 1/32 is a bit big for me as my aim at the moment is to make as complete a set of WW1 aircraft types as possible and my display space would not accomodate this in this scale. Plus my wife would kill me if I spent upwards of 70 smakeroos per kit.

The Elephant's shapes are not outlandish. It looks simple enough that scratchbuilding is a serious option. The fuselage is a simple box shape with a curved turtledeck, the wings and empennage are equally simple and the engine is completely enclosed.

I went ahead and asked the fine folks at Silver Wings if they might be willing to put together a kit on this, and the reply was that they weren't sure if it'd be too niche, or too small of a market.

That is kinda what I thought would be the situation and why I started the thread. Since coming back to modelling (solely WW1 at the moment) I have been trying to gauge just how big a following they have. I live in a small village out in the highlands of Scotland so not close to any modelling community to get an on the ground sense of how popular it is. It strikes me how many limited run/limited edition kits are available new on the net that were produced 10+ years ago. I believe for example that Karaya only produced 350 of each version of the Halberstadt in 1/48 around four years ago and yet you can still buy it new from a few sources.

As for scratchbuilding I am afraid this is beyond my current modelling skills and it would mean having to spend a bit of cash assembling materials such as styrene sheet, styrene rod, scale plans etc. My prime aim is to produce a miniature museum of aircraft to as good a standard as I can. I enjoy the process of assembling kits but fear I am too old to master the exceptional skills I see displayed on the modelling forums.

Harry Woodman did an article on the "Elephant and showed how to scratch build one.

Sounds interesting, where might I find this article?