The Little World

Recently I bought an Airfix Dogfight Double Vintage Classic kit that promised a Bristol fighter as well as a Fokker triplane.

It was a mis-box – I got two Bristols ( Stop thinking of Barbara Windsor… ) but no Fokker. ( Stop, Stop. Just stop thinking of the lovely Carry On lady… )

A friend in my hobby club rocked up at the clubrooms and donated two Revell Dr.1 kits to me. The fascinating thing is they are of two different generations – the older one was boxed in 1984 while the younger one was produced in 2003.

We often twit Revell Germany for re-boxing old moulds at new prices – but in this case I seem to have two perfectly viable kits that will make up well and they were a gift!

The 1984 version has hardly any cockpit detail, a pilot, and odd two-part main struts. The decal sheet is..aged…and not all that well. Fortunately I have a sheet of the Airfix ones from that original VC kit that are modern and printed well.

The 2003 Fokker has immense detail in the cockpit and no pilot to obscure it. All the moulding seems far finer – and the main struts are one-piece. The wheels and tyres look a lot better…but that is 19 years difference for you. I cannot say if the moulds ever originated in Germany or whether the firm has just re-boxed other people’s work.

I shall research colour schemes to make sure I get a different one for each model. But I shall build them in parallel.