It will be 4 years soon, since I took an active part in the design and painting of the new version of the famous Polish Tigr Fitter. It was my first project on an aircraft of the Polish Air Force and it cannot be denied that it was a childhood dream come true. Of course, from the beginning, we assumed to make a decal for this painting in both versions, the original one made in Powidz and refreshed, called by me "The tiger after facelift", and the others called "Parrot";) It is a very personal topic for me and I cannot imagine developing this decal other than perfect. And this is where the problems started :)

The first problem was the lack of models. At that time, only the ZTS Plasyk and Pantera were available in 1/72 scale and the resin conversion to the KP model in 1/48. The project lay and waited. After the appearance of the Kitty Hawk and Hobby Boss models in 1/48, new possibilities appeared. At the same time, it was known that sooner or later Modelsvit will release a 1/72 scale two-seater version, and so the first tryouts started more then year ago...

A separate problem was the printing itself, which will not look good in traditional screen printing, so we only had Cartgoraf, whose only drawback is the high price that affects the retail one, and not everyone is able to pay "any money" Fortunately, our Polish Bigmodel, had start print, which for the last year has been refining the raster printing method at a level that an Italian manufacturer would not be ashamed of, as evidenced by the D..096 Spirit of Oswald Boelcke decal.

Sometimes the project, due to lack of time, took a few weeks, but I was trying to slowly develop something with it. After a short analysis of models and reading the opinions on the Internet, I decided to fit the decal to Hobby Boss model. Apart from private prejudices, the Kitty Hawk model seemed to have more factual errors, but also, above all, a terrible technological breakdown and even worse fit of parts, which effectively discouraged it. The HB model is much simpler and fits better. I know that for those who want nothing difficult, but as a producer we can not only think about a few modelers from the "top of the top" but about everyone who just wants to make the model and put it on the shelf.

The HB model, after applying a pre-prepared decal printed on paper, shows how many errors in the arrangement of individual elements this model has

Unfortunately, this has turned out to be a mistake in recent weeks. Admittedly, most of the model descriptions you will find are for the single-seater version, and the devil is in the details. Well, the hull of the two-seater version of the HB is too short in the middle by about 1cm (10mm) or even more. At the same time, the wing at the point of contact with the fuselage has a relatively correct length, which causes that it protrudes in the front part by this 1 cm too far. It is definitely a lot to be able to perfectly match this painting to this model, without lying a lot along the way, and as I mentioned, I am quite orthodox in this matter. And so over a month of hard work was wasted, because the project was already in its final stage and I wanted it to be released for sale by Christmas at the latest. It was over a month ago and I must admit that I came back to this project only a week ago, when I cooled down :P

From the top of HB and KH, the comparison of the hulls shows the shift of the wings

Well whta to do, we have, what we have... so I took out the KH model and put together the critical parts for the hull. What is two elements in HB, nine in KH ... I don't know why. I still don't change my mind, the model is just weak. Form overgrows the content and nothing fits together completely. Well, I started comparing them with myself. The elements that are critical to me are definitely better for the original "fortunately", so there is a spark of hope. The design from the source file, from which the masks were cut to the original, fit quite well, although here the wing is a bit too much forward. Now it remains to take the shape from the KH model and rework the design for this model. Anyway, I will check how it relates to the HB model later, because the current project on KH managed to fit "somehow".

Project for HB model on KH

As a consolation, I will add that the initial attempts to the Modelsvit model of the original file give hope for not too much work. Which does not change the fact that if another model was to appear in 1/72, I would wait for it. It may not be a bad model, but it is still a short run. It does not change the fact that I need to make four different decals (two paints, old and new in 1/72 and 1/48), which extends the design process.

Project for HB on KH and Modelsvit models

Oryginal project for plane on KH and Modelsvit models.

How long will it take? I do not know. I hope to finish in January or maybe February. Then the test print and if everything will be alright, it will go to print. You have to take into account that at this time other projects are being created so as not to interrupt the publishing continuity, so any problems in one field or another will cause oil slips. I will try to inform you about the progress at least once every two weeks, because as we have already written, we have changed the approach to the newsletter a bit.

The last text this year will be published on Monday, but we would like to inform you today that the last shipment this year will be made also on Monday. Then we take a Christmas and New Year break.

You need to take my apologize for my English. I know it’s not perfect, but hope it’s understandable.

Best Regards

Filip Jereczek-Bambrowicz