Brad, again, thank you very much for the review. You have saved me a lot of money and some disappointment. (Not all disappointment. I'm disappointed that a major fighter a/c of WWI still doesn't have a decent kit in 1/72nd.)
As to the rib count, I believe the Eduard 1/48th Nie.11 had an incorrect rib count, but I'm not sure if this is the source of that error, and I seriously doubt it looking at the other errors, or if the kit they copied it from was in error from the get-go.
I'll be cancelling my pre-order with Hannants for these. The amount of work that needs to be done is reminiscent of having to modify the old Revell kit of 1960's vintage, and I just don't think that in 2024 we should have to be doing that when you have other small companies that can, and do, produce what are considered state-of-the-art kits in 1/72nd.
I don't think I'm being unnecessarily harsh on KP in my criticisms. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's when I decided this was something I wanted to do the only way you could get a Nieuport 17 or Nieuport 11/16 was to take the Revell Nie.17 from 1966 and very heavily modify it. Then along came Eduard in what year? 2006? And they gave us a wonderful Nieuport 17 kit in 1/72nd. That kit is not without its faults at all, and I'll address those on my build thread*, but think of Eduard in 2006: it was still a very small company. They had been producing injected kits for how long? Just over ten years? Remember their initial 1/72nd efforts? The Sopwith Schneider and Sopwith Baby? Their Nieuport 17 was light years ahead of their earlier efforts, and their Fokker Dr.I and Albie D.V from the same period are still great kits. Proof that a small company can produce great injected kits in 1/72nd.
Let's look at another small Eastern European company: Arma Hobby. AH was founded by four or five scale modelers that wanted to produce kits related to Polish aviation. Their Fokker E.V is a beautiful gem of a kit, and is one of their earlier efforts. Everyone that I have spoken with that has built it has had nothing but good things to say about this kit. Just because a company is new and small, I don't think they should get a pass, especially since they've had quite a few kit releases before this, they should have been able to iron out these problems.
Now, I know two things are going to get said, so I'll head them off right now:
- "A real modeler would . . . " No, this is a dismissive statement. Kits in1/72nd scale are not some kind of niche market, it's a very established scale. The 1/32nd builders get great kits. The same with the 1/48th builders, although those have become very few and far between in the last fifteen years sadly, but the ones that are released do no suffer from errors such as this. I'm planting my flag and I'll die on this hill: 1/72nd scale WWI aircraft builders deserve better. We get beautiful kits from Arma Hobby and Eduard, we should demand the same from other manufacturers. 1/72nd scale modelers shouldn't have to settle for leftovers.
- "We should be glad they bothered to produce this." No. If someone came along and produced a Fokker, Albatros, Sopwith Camel, SE5, etc. with these kinds of errors in 2024, folks would not like it. The Nieuport fighters were just as important and innovative as their other famous brethren and deserve as much attention to detail.
Am I mad at KP, or a KP hater? No, not at all. Brad and others pointed out to me some weeks back that they've produced some wonderful kits of WWI types, and for this I guess I got my hopes up too high, and I'm just really disappointed this is what we got.
Warren
*My Nieuport builds are bogged down. I generally get really busy in the spring and summer with home and property maintenance, but last Sunday the community in which a I live and the community where I work were both struck by tornadoes and some very severe storms (100 MPH straight line winds) My home and family are safe, thank God, but I'll be cleaning up the mess (downed and snapped off trees) on my property for weeks, if not months, so that's taking up my time.
