Luft46's Blog

Regular readers will know this blogs tends to eschew comments on politics, religion or sex. But on this occasion it’s relevant.

I currently feel a little sorry for American modellers. With the recently imposed tariffs on China Dragon, Takom, Border Models, Meng etc will now cost more than double their old prices. So any new kits are going to have hefty price tags. Hasegawa, Tamiya, Fujimi, Bandai etc being Japanese companies face a much lower tariff rate but will be still affected.

I haven’t seen much comment from American modellers on this but honestly as I am overseas this is not surprising.

I imagine that hard choices will need to be made by some or possibly many US modellers and I suspect more kits will be pulled from stashes than might have happened otherwise.

As the current US government position on tariffs seems to be whipsawing all over the place the above comments may be irrelevant within days. That’s my total comment on this but wiser readers can read between the lines.

I’m now in the Orkneys around Scapa Flow. I’ll see more of that tomorrow but have already seen the Churchill Barriers which are causeways between the main islands.

Back to Edinburgh last week and I visited Wonderland Models briefly. It’s a good shop that has a wide range of stuff including some older kits including the below photo of a kit I wasn’t aware of from Frog.

I went to the Scottish museum and saw this Fiesler Storch clone from the UK postwar.

And lastly the truth followed by a sort of Tardis –

I’ve got 50 minutes till I board so time for a quick post.

Helsinki

I also bought a saw set to replace my previous one that died in Covid times.

Also whilst there I visited an island in the harbour that had middle ages to 1900s era forts etc. In one of them they had mostly WW2 stuff. Not much unusual so below is a few selected photos.

Rovenamai just north of the Arctic circle and saw this jet

April 1 of course has passed and whilst I liked Airfix’s effort I particularly liked this one.

Lithuania

Near Vilnius is the Hill of Crosses which whilst mostly religious is also nationalistic as this area has been torn down multiple times by the Russians before the latest independence was achieved, each time people had risked their lives to show their wish for independence. Support of Ukraine is very high in these Baltic countries.

Various fighter squadrons have also added crosses etc whilst they have been stationed in this area especially in the last three years.

And lastly in Riga there is four assembly hangars for Zeppelins that are now repurposed as a market.

And when you’re feeling down remember you’re never as underappreciated as the poor people who design man hole covers and somehow manage to bring a little extra to looking down. I love them.