Barracuda offers a vacu-form canopy as well, and that is a worthy addition. The real intakes in your photos look longer than the kit, though I coud not figure out what was amiss to fix it on mine.¸Probably it is just as well to leave them alone, which is what I planned on doing until confronting the thick wings: If you showed it from the same angle, it would jump out that the real intakes are slightly slimmer/longer... Edgar, wide angle lens push the edges of the photo outward, thus away from the subject in the center, and it's at the edges that most distortions occur... So cheap wide-angle lenses with no zoom are the best for capturing the shapes of large objects, especially from a fair distance... Modern Airshow photos often use long zoom lenses to capture the aircraft close-up while in flight, and because of this modern photos are often less reliable than old cheap cameras, because of all the big thick lenses in the newer cameras: Slightly "Bent" banana fuselages etc... Sometimes they turn out good, but old photos are typically more reliable, unless "formatted" to fit neatly within a book's text or margins, which does happen... Gaston

Aaah - No. The intakes on the GP kit are not short, they are level with the third exhaust stack from the front on the real one, the GP kit and pretty much the same for the SH kit. If anything the SH kit looks a fraction long on the intakes as they appear to go to about number two stack, but this is nothing serious or hard to fix if you are really that desperate to 'improve' it. If you compare the location of the side intakes in comparison to the nose intake, the side intakes proportion out about the same loc on both the GP/AZ and SH kits. Once again, I have a finished kit in hand to compare it with the original images. I am also not going to insult people by attempting to take photos of this to prove it. Take it or leave it but in MY opinion both kits look good compared to the original.

You might be able to con younger members with your gobbledygook, but please don't try it on someone who's spent 60 years in photography, there's a good boy. Photograph a person's face, so that it fills a wide-angle lens, and you'll get a smack in the mouth for (apparently) pulling their nose forward, and making them look like Schnozzle Durante. It's also cheap lenses which will give you pin-cushion, or barrel, distortion, not the better-quality items.

Just saw this old thread linked on "Roy's rants"... Comparing the kits from a similar angle brings out more useful comparisons... About the intakes---and everything else on the Grand Phoenix kit (ignore the canopy)----: Note the strange side intakes and their taper or angle, the spinner and general nose proportions, and, most notably to me, the wingtip thickness: Wingtip thickness is even more awful with the actual kit in hand than it appears here (the builder here probably improved on the kit), and is the #1 issue why I bin, give away or sell most limited run kits I encounter: (Model by "Busdriver" on Britmodeller) I hope one day the limited run makers figure out how the actual wingtip of an aircraft is designed... Unfortunately, quite a few mainstream kits are just as bad: The Hasegawa Hurricane is off enough to be a real problem on such a thick wing, and the new Italeri kit is even worse... Thick wings are worse, because any exaggeration affects the taper of the whole wing, and it quickly falls into the cartoonish... Gaston

Once again you're trying to convince us that a photo taken with an unknown camera and an unknown lens and reproduced by unknown means an unknown number of times can be accepted as though it's an accurate representation of the shapes of the real aircraft. Then you take a photo of someone else's model without their permission, also taken with an unknown camera and an unknown lens and reproduced by unknown means an unknown number of times and very obviously taken at a different angle to the subject and expect the conclusions you draw from comparing the two pictures to be meaningful.

You know, I love this site. I come here 3 or 4 times a day just to read what's going on and what people are doing in the a/c modeling world. I contribute what I can and comment when I am moved to.People agree or disagree with me, and that's cool. It's called human interaction. HOWEVER-(love that word) when someone becomes so annoying that just seeing their name above a post makes one leave, the kind people who run this site provided a solution to that also. Just look for the "hide user" button and click on that. For me-no more Gaston-EVER! The only time I am subject to his "opinions" is if someone quotes from him. Easiest way to deal with him-shunning Later PS-never saw the GP kit and looking forward to Special Hobbies

Hi Bruce I'm afraid I can't help but think of my late father when I struggle in a review over the accuracy or otherwise of a kit, or read endless navel-gazing threads tearing a new kit to shreds. He'd have simply said "Just build it and enjoy it, or don't build it - it's up to you. Whichever, it's only six-penny-worth of plastic, so get over it!". LOL! All the best Rowan

I like that! Cheers, Fred

Gaston, do you even read other peoples posts? I already mentioned the side intakes needing a bit of rounding on the top. I have also mentioned that the prop/spinner needs to be replaced as well as possibly the wheels. The wing tips suffer from the standard limited run kit in that the wings need the trailing edges etc thinned. I have not done this on the GP kit that I have made as I could not be bothered but it is simple to do. The general nose proportions appear ok to me but once again I have the made model sitting next to me to make comparisons against the images. For the build of my GP Firefly go to the link below: LINK For a review of the SH Firefly Mk 1 by Steve Long go to the link below: LINK For a review of the SH Firefly Mk 4/5/6 by Steve Long go to the link below: LINK I am currently in the process of SLOWLY making the AZ/GP Firefly Mk 1 kit and the SH Mk 4/5/6 kit (as an RAN AS.6). If you would like to check these out then go to the forum link below: LINK