New F-80s in 72nd

[Maverick]

G'day Gang,

Over on Hyperscale, they have box art for Sword's new RF-80 & F-80.  Look rather spiffy indeed.  I hope they'll be a step up from the otherwise nice Airfix ship.

http://www.hyperscale.com/2008/reviews/kits/rf8072previewbg_1.htm

Regards,

Mav

[Maverick]

Have to agree with you on both points Lee.  The Airfix kit was a little cracker and the Heller twin-tub was a nice build, especially the choice of noses.  Both a streets ahead of the Hasegawa twin-sticker in my opinion.  I know Gran released an F-80, although I was led to believe it was a repop of the Airfix kit.

Regards,

Mav

[ChernayaAkula]

Yeah!  A decent new tool of the F-80 would be great. One of the many mistakenly overlooked subjects.

[philp]

Course, Sword will probably be asking $30 for them.
I still have one of the Airfix kits in the stash so unless they come out at a great price...

[NARSES2]

Have to agree with you on both points Lee.  The Airfix kit was a little cracker and the Heller twin-tub was a nice build, especially the choice of noses.  Both a streets ahead of the Hasegawa twin-sticker in my opinion.  I know Gran released an F-80, although I was led to believe it was a repop of the Airfix kit.

Regards,

Mav

I've got the Gran kit and I can't tell if it is a re-pop of the Airfix kit through all the flash  It's also in a crappy plastic - beware if you are tempted

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Ahhhh the Airfix F-80, what a joy, all it needs/needed was a vac-form canopy and otherwise it was just about perfect. Happy days. Looking forward to a new one, would even tempt me into my once-a-year 1:72 build !

Ian

[Madoc]

Folks,

I picked up a Gran F-80 / P-80 kit and also have a couple of the Airfix renderings.  The two are almost identical.  Almost.

It looks like the Gran folks used the Airfix kit as a master but did some different things to it.  For one, it seems that they "flipped" the mouldings for the right and left halves.  There's still the same join line on the tail that runs along a panel line of the vertical stabilizer.  The wings are different in that Gran moulded the flaps on one half of the wing as opposed to both halves.  The rest looks essentially the same.

One thing I'd like to see with the Sword kit is some better treatment of the air intakes.  The P-80 sported some rather complex shapes in that area that no one has done real justice to.  Additionally, the boundary air outlets - those little vents on the top and bottom of the inlets just back from the lips - are something which gets wiped away on the Airfix kits if you attempt to do anything to deal with the awful seams that run rampant through that entire assembly.

Here's hope Sword does better!

Madoc

[B777LR]

LMAO, the RF-80 looks like a 1950s submarine!