Post by neilscrim on May 22, 2008 9:45:33 GMT
When the Nimrod was released I bought 2 of them but in both of the kits the decal sheets were poor (smudged black), I posted this 'discovery' elsewhere on the forum.
I asked Hornby for a replacement and heard nothing. I emailed them again and they said they were still looking into the problem. Problem? What problem? All I needed was a replacement sheet, that shouldn't be a problem.
Well today I got a surprise package, 1 replacement decal sheet. I needed 2 replacement sheets but at the moment I consider myself lucky to get one sheet at all. And anyway, Mr decal bank (aka Colin) came to my rescue, so with the new sheet and what Colin supplied I'm covered for Nimrod decals. BTW Colin, this means I should have some spare decals for you in the future.
However, I was also sent a strange addendum sheet. In the kit, some of the original decals are half-toned, ie made up of dots, ie the pale roundels were dots of solid blue and red to make the colours appear pale. This addendum sheet was solid white roundels and fin flashes for option C, which is the large pale insignia Nimrod.
Aha! Eureka moment. This must have been the 'problem' that they had mentioned previously. I would guess if you put those half-toned roundels on a non-white background, the roundels wouldn't look pale red/blue.
So what we have here is a cockup. Airfix tried to save money on decal costs by using half-toning and, going by my original kit sheets, a 'cheap' (poor) decal manufacturer as well.
They've now had to produce an addendum sheet and probably get the original decal sheet reprinted for the likes of me, who needed complete sheet replacements. All that would have cost extra money, which could have been better spent on eliminating half-toning and using a decent decal manufacturer in the first place. My worry is that this does not bode well for their future releases, any new releases in the past 3-4 months may suffer the same half-toning problem.
Let's hope they have learned their lesson...don't cut corners.
I asked Hornby for a replacement and heard nothing. I emailed them again and they said they were still looking into the problem. Problem? What problem? All I needed was a replacement sheet, that shouldn't be a problem.
Well today I got a surprise package, 1 replacement decal sheet. I needed 2 replacement sheets but at the moment I consider myself lucky to get one sheet at all. And anyway, Mr decal bank (aka Colin) came to my rescue, so with the new sheet and what Colin supplied I'm covered for Nimrod decals. BTW Colin, this means I should have some spare decals for you in the future.
However, I was also sent a strange addendum sheet. In the kit, some of the original decals are half-toned, ie made up of dots, ie the pale roundels were dots of solid blue and red to make the colours appear pale. This addendum sheet was solid white roundels and fin flashes for option C, which is the large pale insignia Nimrod.
Aha! Eureka moment. This must have been the 'problem' that they had mentioned previously. I would guess if you put those half-toned roundels on a non-white background, the roundels wouldn't look pale red/blue.
So what we have here is a cockup. Airfix tried to save money on decal costs by using half-toning and, going by my original kit sheets, a 'cheap' (poor) decal manufacturer as well.
They've now had to produce an addendum sheet and probably get the original decal sheet reprinted for the likes of me, who needed complete sheet replacements. All that would have cost extra money, which could have been better spent on eliminating half-toning and using a decent decal manufacturer in the first place. My worry is that this does not bode well for their future releases, any new releases in the past 3-4 months may suffer the same half-toning problem.
Let's hope they have learned their lesson...don't cut corners.