The front end certainly looks 'busy' in this shot and there will be the need for very careful masking of that canopy. It's nice to see that Hasegawa have taken some thought about how to fair-in the canopy to the hull and have appeared to allow the joint to be clear of the actual glazing so that sanding can be carried out without scratching the 'glass' areas.

The mid-area of the hull interior looks quite detailed bearing in mind that as is usual in these cases virtually nothing will be seen once the hull halves are closed up!

1/72 scale engines look good however, those props look far too 'fat' to me compared to the walk-round images in the SEAWINGS 'Emily' Gallery taken of the only restored survivor on display in Japan. Hopefully, the manufacturers design team will take account of this before it's released. Beaching gear looks good.

Here's a good idea, full-depth wing spars to hold the large wing sections in place. That looks like it will make a solid-enough structure to me!

Here is a view of the upper port-outer wing section showed delicate detail that will repay careful building and painting. Notice the sculpting where the fabric sections of the wing are; this matched perfectly in my view the same areas shown on the walk-round images. Lovely..!

For those modelers that want a full crew, Hasegawa have obliged as seen here. The cockpit area certainly carries more accurate details than their original 'Emily' however, once the cockpit glazing is masked and painted only limited visual access will available in this scale, of course. But, it's nice to know it's there..!

The sprue attachment points look to be as thin as could possibly be allowed for; just look at those for one of the seats! Here we see one of the floats, a torpedo complete with propeller running gear moulded on..! And, this is 1/72 scale remember......

Even the tail gunner's position gets some decent interior detailing as well as the gunner crew-member himself, and the gun looks good too..! Note the sturdy tailplane attachment stub in the top-left of the picture; that will make for a strong joint for the tailplane halves.

And finally, some close-up shots of the some of the crew members; and remember this is 1/72 scale! You would be forgiven if you thought they were 1/48 or larger. That's cool work on the part of the kit designers.

So, there you have it; a 'taster' of what is to come in 2017.

The good news is that there is plenty of reference material on this site for the model builder and more to come as we get close to the release date in the way of detail photo's, plans and drawings. It's going to be worth the wait by the looks of it, I just wonder what the retail cost will be?

1/72 scale highly detailed injected and resin kit of the SARO A.19 Cloud with multiple choice quality decals. Click image for more details.

MPM can be contacted by clicking here.

LEFT: is a small sample of the civilian option decal sheet. Looking at the full-sized sheet specimen it appears to be in perfect register and colour

We have waited so long for a replacement to the Airfix kit, but is this it?

I'm not going to make a hard-and-fast judgement here as this is the first time I have seen these images, like you, and like you I can at this moment only comment on what I can see before me. So, what do I think so far?

Well, some thoughts have bounced straight into my flying boat - model kit - brain straight-away; for instance, the float struts look a shade too long and gangly, the tail fin looks too upright and there are loads of ejector-pin circles within the interior of the forward hull that will prove a right pain to eliminate.

The exterior panel lines look very, well, panel-like, but over width and leaving the airframe looking like a ship's hull rather than a flying boat but that could well disappear under a couple of layers of undercoat paint and eventually look quite respectable. I hope so as this example is looking like it's made from boiler-plate! Looking at the real thing, the hull contains thousands of rivets delineating the various panel lines, not 'lumpy' panels themselves. Very difficult to get right.

It certainly looks like a Sunderland Mk.I to my eyes; the upper gun positions appear to have been dealt with satisfactorily, as has the rear turret, but shouldn't there be a small window set in the hull directly forward of the turret at the 10 o'clock & 2 o'clock position? It was certainly there on early Sunderlands.

As to the interior images, there is a lot of work still left to be accomplished here if one is going to set the front turret back and leave the port entrance door open. The forward area is missing vertical ladders (but they may still be part of the kit, yet not used in this test-build) and the wardroom is missing its floor, and the toilet area is missing a bulkhead.

I think it is invidious to continue too much in trying to interpret thoughts from these images so I'll just say that I welcome this kit with open arms; if there are errors with it, I do hope Italeri will take a look at the surviving examples, the scale plans and the myriad number of photographs that exists of this iconic RAF WWII flying boat and try to correct them before it is issued in September. After all, with the references available for this particular 'boat, it can't be that hard to get it wrong, can it?

Finally, there is also a Sunderland in 1/72 due from MPM in due course, and how good that one is, and whether it is better or worse than this example, remains to be seen.

What one can say is that right now, flying boat modelers in 1/72 scale have never had it so good!