Here is all the evidence of a lovely model about to be released - a Dr.1 Triplane, designed, quality controlled and tweaked by WNW and about to be released by Meng - a company with a great reputation, and there are problems! No ways, don't give me them negative vibes! This is great news, and completely legit ... (is there any crook you know who goes on a massive ad campaign to advertise their future international crime??) So, we know the provenance of this kit, we know that Meng has done tooling for WNW in the past... but what else? Also we know that tooling for WNW was done by at least two Chinese companies and one Korean company at the very least .. but not a lot of further information... We are left to piece the evidence together ourselves, and there is some.. Can you allow me a little of your valuable browsing time to give you my synopsis and review? I will try to stick to evidence I can show... not prove, that is left up to you and the future to reveal... But if we try to predict, surmise and deduce we may just get a response from those who know just a tad more, so if the moderators will tolerate this, can we proceed...
This photo may not mean much to you, but to me it shows two different companies tooled these sprues, one for the Camel, and one for the Pup. Note the different diameters for the runners, the different diameters of the runner radii at the corners, the different lettering and particularly the number 1, and even the logo has differences! Maybe a bad day by the toolmaker, I don't think so! Bear with me, this has relevance....
A few ex-employees of WNW have stated, quite correctly, that many of the engine sprues are generic, and were used for many years for many models. The Mercedes engine particularly. But the Dr.1 has an Oberursel Ur.2 engine, and this seems to be a unique sprue, but it is the same engine as the Le Rhone 9J (and the J is important). The only other WNW kit I am aware of that has a production run with this engine is the Camel... And on carefully looking at the other Camel sprues, many of the other engine choices are already older sprues produced by WNW.. except the Bentley Br1! And if you have a careful look at the sprue differences on the WNW site (like I demonstrated above) it is quite obvious that the Le Rhone 9J sprue and the Ur2 sprue were produced by the same manufacturer and completely different to every other WNW rotary engine! So I looked carefully at the Camel sprues, just a bit different to other WNW tooling... We have heard, little noises, that Meng was responsible for other WNW toolings, could it be the Camel or just the engine? There is some rumour that there is at least one as yet unannounced WNW tooling by Meng for a future release... This is all great news! (but for sure not the H-P or the Lanc). I did a prediction on another thread that we would see the toolings used again... yes, the packaging, decals and instructions may not be the same in the future, but nothing we, as modellers, cannot improve on if need be and utilize...
I need to reiterate that we are in the golden era of WW1 aircraft modelling, and it isn't over yet, not by a long shot!
Regards,
Marc
