SCALE MODEL NEWS

The SMN crew trust you had a good Christmas break, and offer you all best wishes for a great model making year in 2010. And the manufacturers have some cool new items on the stocks, ready to tempt us in the months to come and to start, here's a look at some of the kits coming down the road from the revitalised Airfix. If you’re an Airfix Club member then the ‘Club-only’ kit should be interesting. The box contains a pair of 1:72 scale V/STOL Harriers, a Harrier II GR7 and a new-tool Sea Harrier FA2. They will make a handsome pair that will look good on display together. For ship fans, Airfix will be releasing a 1:350 scale Trafalgar class submarine. There are six remaining boats in the fleet (one was decommisioned in November 2009) three of which are fitted with the 2076 sonar, reckoned by the Royal Navy to be the most advanced such system in the world. The Airfix sub scales out at some 244 mm (9.6 in). Military 1:76 scale enthusiasts will find the Ruined European Workshop useful fo...

The Challarostang looks a goodie, but it occurred to us that model makers needn't stop with the US pony car inventory. So for 2010, what about making a tasty fusion of sports cars from Britain? Maybe a mix of Jaguar, Aston-Martin and Austin-Healey for starters, but there's a galaxy of candidates from the hall of history - TVR, MG, Morgan and Sunbeam are just a few names to get started with. Or there's a steampunk route for sci-fi car fans too - something like the Brumm 1:43 Morgan three-wheeler is just made for conversion into some sort of Victorian-era machine. Perhaps reborn as a 'Heroes of the Air' flying car, suspended under an airship gasbag. It really was an amazing little device, seen in the pic above in the All British Car Show at Yolo County Fairgrounds, Woodland, California, in May 2008. See the Brumm Morgan here . Thanks to 'The Brain Toad' for the Morgan pic. His Flikr stream is here .

US pony cars began with the 1964 Ford Mustang, a sports car for everyman USA, even if it was based on the mundane Ford Falcon sedan (to the Brits, that’s a saloon btw). And now we’re up to the 2010s, with not only new, fire-breathing Mustangs, but also modern versions of its original competitors, the Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet Camaro. You can take your pick which one you prefer of the three, or you can do what car model fan Robert D did, and that was to combine elements of all three into a model auto-fusion concept, nicknamed the Challarostang. In fact, sections of the three vehicles blended together without too much trouble at all, and Robert’s yellow-peril final result looks pretty much like it could have been designed in one studio instead of three. Of his Challarostang he says: “I like the main body of the Camaro better than the Challenger. I like the Challenger front end better than the Camaro. Once the idea was in my head to add Mustang to the equation, it all came together, ...

It’s that time of year again, so best wishes to you all and have a great time over the festive season. Who knows, with a few days off, there might be time to finish off that half-completed project that's been sitting on a shelf, just awaiting some tender loving care! The video showcases the cream of US yuletide stores - Macy's Santaland, the Lionel Store, Grand Central Terminal, Becker Group's North Pole Village and more. We show it here courtesy TW Trainworx, a custom-build 'traingeneering' outfit based in Dallas, Texas. You can visit TWT here .

Mr J reports Tom Daniel’s Rommel’s Rod makes a terrific custom model, but it did start us thinking about the inspiration for it, Rommel’s actual halftrack, named the ‘Greif’. That’s German for ‘Griffin’, a mythical creature of divine power, though there’s also a hunting dog breed with a similar name, so maybe Rommel liked both. Airfix has an elderly (but still OK) 1:32 model that you can often find with some hunting around - we turned one up on eBay Canada. To a smaller scale, but newer and more useful as a diorama accessory is the beautiful little 1:48 scale Greif in Tamiya’s Military Miniatures series, complete with a reasonably lifelike Rommel figure, and two crewmen. It measures just 102 mm (4 in) long, yet packs in plenty of lovely detail, including a radio, machine gun, frame antenna and floorboard texture. Of course, you don’t have to build it as a Rommel special - there were dozens of design variations on the basic vehicle, so the choice is yours. On the SMN wish-list would be ...

Mat Irvine reports When it came to modellers wanting particular kits reissued, one that was way, way, near the top for car enthusiasts was a strange ‘show rod’ produced by Monogram in 1969. Designed by famed custom car designer Tom Daniel, who had created many of Monogram’s other wacky creations, Rommel’s Rod was a take on what the World War II ‘Desert Fox’ Field Marshall Erwin Rommel should have driven, or be driven in, during his battles with Allied forces from 1941-43. Based (very loosely) on Rommel’s personal Mercedes-Benz half-track, Daniel’s design is ever weirder in that Rommel and his driver are represented by skeletons, maybe risen from the ever-shifting sands of the North African Desert! Rommel’s Rod was one of Monogram best-selling show rods, and when the combined Revell-Monogram company started the Selected Subject Program (SSP) range in 1992, the ‘Krazy Kommand Kar’ was definitely slated for reissue. It was consequently listed in SSP Phase 4, dated Fall 1993, but then cam...

SMN took in a fascinating exhibition yesterday, at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science (OMHS), in the famed UK university city. The show’s all about ‘Steampunk’, a genre of science fiction that combines Victorian-era technology and materials in a ‘what-if’ scenario of how things might appear with a hint of today’s science in the mix. It’s a very appealing look that features brass, copper, iron, and rich woodwork in a sort of Jules Verne sci-fi style - if you liked the Walt Disney movie 20,000 Leagues under the Sea , then you’ll enjoy steampunk. The OMHS features a bunch of artists and their creations, with a corner devoted to SMN’s favourite steampunker, Stephane Halleux, with work that’s unique in the field for its gently humorous flavour (top two pictures above). All the pieces are notable for the model-making skills that went into making them, and that’s why we’ve included them today. Halleux’s work features stitched leather that wouldn’t look out of place in a World War I b...

Mat Irvine reports 19 December 1960 saw the very first launch of a Mercury capsule on a Redstone booster. This short flight (15 minutes 45 seconds) did not carry an astronaut though, for it was a ‘boiler-plate’ capsule (see previous posting on this subject), a test article built to check out systems, from basics like “does it fit on the top of the launch rocket?” to later technicalities, such as checking parachute deployment. For many years the best Mercury capsule you could get as a model kit was a 1:48 scale version that arrived in a box along with its bigger two-man sibling, Gemini. This was by Revell, and the kit has been around for many years, also cropping up twice under the Monogram name. But a few years ago, space modelling enthusiast Scott Alexander made the brave decision to design and finance a larger (and ‘larger’ here means ‘a lot larger’) model of this iconic capsule to 1:12 scale, making it four times the size of the Revell kit, so it packs a whole lot of detail. Scott r...