I took the family to the" Stampe en Vertongen Museum" at Antwerp Airport yesterday afternoon !
http://www.stampe.be/UK/IndexUK.html... and offcourse upon leaving , we had to pass the ...."inevitable museum shop"
!
Now besides loads of books, the elderly gentleman who ran the shop (on a volutary base) seemed to stack an impressive amount of WW1 airplane models ... amongst them Roden and Academy modells. We started talking and it seemed the gentleman was a keen modeller to ! What struck me were the ludicrous low prices he charged !! He explained the museum ran mostly on sponsering and and on the spare time ( and effort) of voluteers like himself who were willing to offer their free time. He explained that should they charge more ...no one would be interested ! when I'm talking about low prices I mean 15 euro for instance, for the Academy Nieuport 17 on 1/32th scale ! ... I noticed he also had the " Manfred Von Richthofen" 1/28 th Fokker D1 from Revell ! ...
18 euro ! I know it is an old model, but still the size off the scale made me quiet curious !! So into my wallet I went !
... Once at home when I had unrapt the box and had opened it , my first impression was one of sheer disappointment . The more I looked at the hideous heap of ...red plastic the more this sentiment grew. So in hoping to "save some of the furniture", I started scavenging the internet to find some posts of "fellow modellers" who in the past had been able to make something descent out of ... this ...THING ? I must say ... I was able to find a few interesting posts which gave me the feeling all had not been lost yet !
Since there are quiet a few things that need to be altered, reshaped or ...rebuild from scratch ... " Googling" taught me that a British based company
Copperstatemodels provided some extra's ( f.e. resin spandau's photoetch etc ) for this particular model to make it more presentable and realistic !
I have a question concerning the company what's the story about this company at the moment ?
I mean do they
still exist ? I found posts on fora assuming that the company was out off buissiness and the website domain up for sale ... then I stumbled upon this link ...
http://copperstatemodels.com/index.php?p=HOMEPAGE&m=HOMEPAGE... Has the company been taken over and is this their actual homepage ...it doesn't give a lot of information about the products and seems brand new...
... now again ... I am a novice into " ww1 airplane modeling" and I don't know "who is who" yet in this particular modelling world ...but I was just wondering if my "Fokker altering" problem could be solved ... perhaps ( and most likely) the owner(s) is (are)" forum members" as well and in that case my sincere apologies for my ignorance... it just wasn't clear to me
PS ... I was planning of making the Jasta 11(August 1917) version which I find far more attractive (just my opinion !) than the
"Red Baron" version
Hugh