Those of you who follow the scale modeling sites and newsgroups on the Internet may recall the flurry of comments, exclamations, and statements which attended the release of AMtech's second release, the P-40E "Warhawk/Kittyhawk" (Kit No. 484602) in March of 2002. The obvious quality of the moldings were highly praised - and compared favorably to the quality of earlier kits by another notable Model maker, Accurate Miniatures. Unfortunately, a flaw was discovered in the fuselage - a "step" in the casting where the tail assembly joins the fuselage. This flaw was announced and described (with photos) by the Modeling Madness Website - and the article included a statement from the Owner/Operator of AMtech, Mr. Alan Griffith, regarding the flaw, and announced that corrected parts would be made available as quickly as possible.

This writer was one of those who rushed out and purchased the P-40E as soon as it became available - and needless to say, was somewhat concerned (read as: dismayed) when I saw the "step" in the fuselage. Accordingly, I followed the instructions posted on the Modeling Madness Website and requested corrected replacement parts. I am delighted to report that not only did AMtech honor their promise, but I received those replacement parts EIGHT DAYS after I mailed my request. I had preceded my request with an Email to AMtech and received a personal and courteous reply from Mr. Alan Griffith himself, attesting to his commitment to supporting his products. I am here to tell you that AMtech does indeed support it's customers and back up it's products. The speed with which AMtech corrected this problem was simply incredible, and out of curiosity, I sent one more Email to Mr. Griffith, inquiring as to the cause of the original problem and his solution. This was his reply:

I've been a modeler for 45 of my 50 years. When establishing this company, the basic pillars of its foundation were to provide modelers with the best possible kits of interesting subject matter that had either never been done or were hopelessly out-of-date. Another was that I would treat my fellow modelers with the same respect and honesty that I expect to be treated with. This includes owning up to a problem and getting it fixed as quickly as possible.

As for how it happened and how we got it fixed so quickly, some of what I'm about to tell you is informed speculation. The kit was originally designed to provide multiple versions from basic "core" parts. In other words, AMT did essentially what Curtiss did: kept most of the basic parts and only changed the easy stuff. I won't get into the original design and changes of the actual P-40, but it IS fascinating! Anyway, the tail parts were done with what is called a "slide", or insert. This is a hole in the tool into which is dropped the correct piece of the tool for the tail that is desired. You see this all the time with model kits, and it saves tooling an entire new fuselage when only certain changes are needed that should be integral to the parts. In the case of multi-engined aircraft or additional add-on parts, they are tooled and then "gated". This means that the parts are on the tool, but there is literally a gate that can be opened or closed depending upon what parts you want to run for the version

What apparently happened with the P-40E is that the slide was not properly seated or inserted when the tool was run for production. Since the original test shots we received for approval did NOT have this step, we just assumed the production kits would be the same. Thus, they came in, we packed and shipped them, and did not closely study the parts to make sure they were okay. Well, that is not entirely true. We checked the places that had been prone to not entirely filling or had lots of flash, not thinking to check something that had been okay to start with. You know the rest of the story.

Upon seeing the complaints on Hyperscale, we immediately posted that we knew there was a problem and would fix it, and did a random check of the remaining kits to see how widespread the problem was. It was rampant, although it did vary in severity. Still, it was not what we approved nor what we would settle for. I immediately contacted RacingChampions/ERTL, and sent them copies to show the problem. They acknowledged that this was not right, and contacted the factory in Hong Kong where the kits were produced. Within about a week of finding out about the problem, we had test shots of the correction. We okayed it, making sure they understood that they ALL needed to look like that. We then had enough new fuselages produced to replace all those we had originally purchased. We posted how to get new fuselages, and contacted all our distributors to let them know about the problem and the fix. AMtech had Hong Kong airfreight us 2000 of the corrected fuselages in order to take care of the immediate needs of model

All newly-packed P-40s shall have the replacement parts packed within the box, and be labeled to indicate that they contain these.

I don't know exactly how the folks in Hong Kong "fixed" the problem because I don't know how they screwed it up in the first place. However, there is obviously enough "play" in the tool that enables them to run it with the slide not properly seated. Apparently they just paid a lot more attention to it when they ran our replacement parts. My hat is off to RacingChampions/ERTL and the speed with which they addressed and fixed the problem. My contact there showed himself to be a first-class, stand-up guy, and I have nothing but kudos for him. I'd share his name, but I'm not sure he would want it all over kingdom come.

Hopefully that will give you some insight into the process.

Regards,

Alan Griffith
AMtech, Inc.