Two Sea Kings and other stories

Story of Two Sea Kings
Web Site Redesign - again!
New Arrivals, Blogs and Twitter

A Story Of Two Sea Kings

Why is it when you wait for a long time, two come up together. It works for buses. Now it works for Sea Kings.

Firstly, although only a reboxing with some new sprues, Airfix have
released their Westland Sea King HAS Mk.2/ASaC.Mk.7 in 1/72nd.



At £10.44 (after our current 5% discount) this is good value, which is
more than can be said for the other one.

 

Hasegawa prices are becoming an international talking point - something that is amply demonstrated by their new Seaking HAR.3 RAF Rescue.

This is a first in 1/48th - a real Westland HAR.3 with all the right bits. However, at £66.49 (£69.99 less discount) , many will feel that they can wait a bit longer. If you can't then what you get is a nicely moulded kit - albeit in bright yellow plastic, plus two decal variants, both dating from 1992. Those of you in the local club in Ipswich who were hoping for modern Wattisham decals will be disappointed. I guess we have to wait for Xtradecal to do a whole sheet to cover all current aircraft. Mind you that will add another £8 - £10 to the cost, making this a determined purchase. A point of interest - quite what the torpedoes are doing in the kit is anyone's guess.

Web Site Redesign

Further changes will be appearing this week. The three main changes are as follows:

If you put in some keywords and they only match one item, you will be taken straight to the single item, rather than to the search results list - and then select the single item. Just a small change but it adds to the convenience.

The search results page, at long last, will have alternating background colours so that you can see each entry more clearly.

The search results page will have a check box at the end of each item
line. If you know that you want to buy the item, then click on the
check box and then click on the button at the bottom of the page to
buy. Not too useful for a single item but if you want to buy, say, 10
Xtracolor enamels, then this is an easy way to do it.

New Arrivals, Blogs andTwitter

Oh what a long list of new arrivals this week. We are almost spoiled for choice. I will mention only a few so please check out the New Arrivals link on the home page.

At long last there has been a delivery of Bronco kits so we are now shipping all of the back orders for Comets, Bailey Bridges and Cruiser A13 tanks. However, the really good news is that we can now ship CB35035 - The  WWII Triumph motor bike and CB35051 - the Adler Radio car.
Kits World decals are a new one on us. These are a range of 1/72 and 1/48 decals for USAAF  aircraft. Examples are KW48001 and KW72001.
Dragon has a list of new releases including a new Tiger I - DN6600 - Pz.Kpfw.VI Ausf.E Tiger 1 Initial Production s.Pz.Abt 502 Mishkino 1943.	AZM48040 - Grumman Widgeon

A quick run down on some of the other items:

HB80355 - a 1/48th ADV Tornado

K48028 - A Block 52 Hellenic F-16

K48029 - A Block 60 UAE F-16


Every week we update the site for all the newly released items. This is available from the New Arrivals link on the home page.

We also update the Shop Blog with comments, ideas, hints and tips. The blog is here.

Twitter is a bit of a mystery to us but we have recently started to Tweet(!) news to our Twitter page.

Lastly, don't forget David's increasingly popular modelling Blog. Follow his mistakes, errors and successes at Gentle Scale Modelling

That's all for now

Some good news

Firstly, we have an apology-

About 10 days ago, the web site had a major issue when trying to purchase the items in your basket. This manifested itself as a time out when trying to finalise the transaction. As we do not
charge your card as part of the online process - only when we ship - there was no security risk, however, some people did fail to get their orders processed.

We finally tracked this down to a problem with printers on the system. Once this was cleared, the web site returned to normal.

If you did have a problem at that time, please try again - we are offering you two GREAT reasons to come back to us soon.

In this issue

Father's Day Iwata Special
5% Discount on the Web Site
Web Site Redesign
New Arrivals, Blogs and Twitter

Father's Day 20th June 2010

As part of our celebrations for Father's day (David has four kids so it's always a good day for him), we are offering a very special discount on everything Iwata up until 30th June.

What better Father's day gift than a new airbrush, or even a new airbrush/compressor combination. We have always offered a discount when you buy a compressor and an airbrush as a combination but it just got even better.

15% of all Iwata items including airbrushes, compressors and combination packs.

Examples


Iwata Eclipse Airbrush - Recommended retail price £129.99 - now £110.49 - that's a saving of £19.50!

Iwata Sprint Jet Compressor - Recommended retail price £190.00 - now £161.50 - that's a saving of £28.50!

Both together when bought individually have a total RRP of £319.99 -  our combination price is  £242.91 - that's a saving of £77.08 and a massive 24% OFF!

FREE worldwide delivery still applies!

5% off Everything else on the web site

As of now, and valid until at least 31 July 2010, we are giving you a 5% discount off everything on the web site (except for Iwata items - see above). This discount is applied automatically. You will see your savings in the description of any item you browse. Needless to say, this is in addition to our already famous FREE Worldwide delivery*.
*(Sorry but anything totalling £6 or below is charged at £2 - this is because of the way that the UK Royal Mail charges for its small packets)

Web Site Redesign

We have just released the first part of our re-designed web site. We hope that you like the clean new look. Over the next couple of days we will be rolling out all of the remaining pages so that the whole thing will be a better experience. Built in to the site is a feature that checks both the stock situation with us and with our suppliers. This means that if we don't have it and they do, we will confirm the availability. As we order almost daily, even if the item has to be supplied to us, it will still mean a fast delivery to you - and still FREE!

If we state that an item is out of stock then this is because neither we nor our wholesalers have the item. In that case if you place it on your order, we will ship it as soon as it becomes available.

New Arrivals, Blogs and Twitter

Every week we update the site for all the newly released items. This is available from the New Arrivals link on the home page.

Twitter is a bit of a mystery to us but we have recently started to Tweet(!) news to our Twitter page.

Lastly, don't forget David's increasingly popular modelling Blog. Follow his mistakes, errors and successes at Gentle Scale Modelling

That's all for now

David

Vallejo Polyurethane Primer

Tamiya Magazine extolled the virtues of the new Vallejo primer which the editor obtained at Nuremburg. It has taken some time for it to arrive but we now have it in stock. I thought you might like to know what it is like. It comes in three colours and two sizes. There is a choice of 60ml (£4.95) and 200ml (£9.99) in White, Grey or Black. Black, I assume, is for the Games Workshop crowd where they always recommend a black base for all figure painting. Not sure that I agree but there we are. This leaves a choice of White or Grey so I decided to try both.

So far I can't talk about toughness. This report is purely about its application to a model. I had two items that needed priming - a 1/10th scale bust in resin and a 1/48the Hasegawa F-16I Sufa. I decided to prime the F-16 with white and the figure with grey. the F-16 is getting Israeli camo so it will have a light coloured underside so white seemed the best choice. As the figure is a German Feldgendarme in a rubberised German Grey/Green colour, the grey seems ideal/ The grey went on like a dream. It is very much lighter than my usual favourite - Vallejo Model Air grey. It also covered easily in one coat and when on quite thin. The white wasn't quite such a good experience. I found that it needed a couple of coats to cover - even to the level seen in the photo below. I also found that I needed to thin the primer half way through. It seemed to thicken up as I went. It also didn't want to be misted on so gave quite a wet finish. However, after letting both dry thoroughly, I can't really tell any difference between them except for the lack of complete cover from the white. I will let you know how I got on with durability once I start painting the figure. It is very easy to rub primer off a resin figure as you turn it around to paint it - we shall see.