the hardships of a herpa wings product manager

getifero · 07-12-2020, 05:56 AM

Excerpt of herpas digital open house day live stream on instagram (07.07.2020).

Question: Do you have plans on improving the A320neo? The ground clearance of the engine is too small.

Stephan Külgen (product manager herpa wings): Yes we know. It's kinda tricky actually, because you have to change a lot of things. You can not just change the engine itself with the pylon or the ... [the sentence is not finished]. It's a combination of the angle of the wings, it's part of pylon... there is a issue...[sentences are unfinished]. We're talking about... hem hem... really very very very tiny measurements that are less than..., far less than a fraction of a millimetre and hem... we're just trying to still find out the best way to handle this because everything we change does mean an investment in new tooling. So we have to find a way to make it look nice but also to make it feasible, to make it economical. So we are...we...it is something we are aware of and we'll hopefully have a solution soon.

My reactions: How many years have elapsed since herpa realized, that the engine ground clearance of their A320neo family is a continous annoyance among collectors? How many years will elapse until herpa finds an ecomomically feasable solution that looks »nice«? Do they really believe that there is still a very very very tiny fraction of credibility in statements such as »we'll hopefully have a solution soon«?

DutchCollector · 07-12-2020, 07:23 AM

Meanwhile I'm just wondering why Herpa keeps slapping GE90s under 777-200ERs and apparently P&W engines under Icelandair's 763s. Surely someone at Herpa must have proper intelligence and see this is unacceptable.

My point being, with mistakes such as my above mentioned problem, how can we realistically expect Herpa to pay attention to such a small detail when there are many more obvious flaws..

TopJet · 07-12-2020, 08:40 AM

Utter rubbish from Herpa regarding the A320neo. The engines are too big. End of. We had those stupid wings that bent upward years ago but they're fine now. Just make some smaller engines instead of using those badly scaled down Gemini examples. Why are they making a drama out of nothing?

LeoMuse747 · 07-12-2020, 11:13 AM

"Yes, we know the engines are too close from the ground, but people are still buying our models and we don't have competitors, so why even bother?"

getifero · 07-12-2020, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchCollector

Meanwhile I'm just wondering why Herpa keeps slapping GE90s under 777-200ERs and apparently P&W engines under Icelandair's 763s. Surely someone at Herpa must have proper intelligence and see this is unacceptable.

My point being, with mistakes such as my above mentioned problem, how can we realistically expect Herpa to pay attention to such a small detail when there are many more obvious flaws..

I think most 1:500-scale collectors can't distinguish a GE90 from a Trent 800 or a PW4000 on a B777. But the vast majority of 1:500-scale collectors will notice that the A320neo-family in spite of oversized and too tall gears has almost ground touching engines. Hence the A320neo-family engine/engine-pylon issue has a different quality.

herpas one fits all B777-engine-approach is more then 10 years old and if I compare the simplistic Trent engines of the NG herpa American Airlines from 2005 it is by far outperformed by the Aero500 version (from 2009). In other words herpas first generation B777 engines never were great and herpas subsequent one fits all-approach was not a major step back for the majority of collectors.

In case of the wrong PW-engines on the Icelandair B763 it is not a general B763 issue but a fault of the Chinese manufacturer or rather herpas lack of quality control. Again I think this error passed almost unnoticed and was not mentioned on herpas open house day live stream. A topic was rather herpas move to sell remainders as special models via additional imprint.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TopJet

....Why are they making a drama out of nothing?

Perhaps to grab more understanding for their already over several years ongoing inertia.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeoMuse747

"Yes, we know the engines are too close from the ground, but people are still buying our models and we don't have competitors, so why even bother?"

Leo, we can't expect relentless openness (but maybe cleverer excuses).