SCALE MODEL NEWS

  Mat Irvine reports One of the biggest movies of 1986 was Top Gun , with Tom Cruise playing Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (as plotted, the call sign was one he took literally) at the US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School. The video should give you a reminder of the movie's plot, people, and of course, the planes. Top Gun is back Given that the storyline was very aircraft-intense, it was a natural for the model companies and both Airfix and Testors issued a number of kits for aircraft featured in the film. Well, that was back in the 1980s - but now in 2010, we have a new Top Gun kit! Aoshima has taken its Kawasaki GPZ9000R Ninja motorbike kit and modified it to represent the one Maverick rode in the movie. New detail parts for Top Gun superbike The basic kit has been in the Aoshima list for some time, but this model has new front forks and rear swing-arms, new wheels and new rear-view mirrors. The decals also reflect the version seen in the movie, including the “No Wussys” sign...

Here's a bigger picture of the Moonbus, to show the crew seated in the flight deck, which you couldn't see before. It looks like a spacious place to be. As an aside, what a shame it is that the combined vision that 2001 Director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke had of the future development of spaceflight has never come to pass. If the US had just kept turning out those Saturn 5 rockets, then there would surely be a permanent Moonbase by now, and the Moon itself might even be the 51st state. As it is, Chinese or Indians are odds-on to be the next humans on the Moon - and good luck to them, if their governments have the cojones and vision t o get on with it.

Mat Irvine reports The Moonbus from 2001: A Space Odyssey was first issued as a kit by Aurora in 1968, along with Aurora’s take on the Orion spaceplane from the same movie. The Orion was reissued in 1975, but the Moonbus never reappeared and prices for the kit have tended to go through the roof on certain on-line auction sites. Retro-engineered Moonbus Moebius Models - one of those new model companies often dubbed the ‘New Aurora’ - has been contemplating the Moonbus for a couple of years, and now it is available online and in stores. The approximately 1:55 scale spacecraft is a retro-engineered kit - one that is copied from an existing original, with subtle changes made to improve assembly. Useful improvements Changes include the addition of locating pins and the like, which are hidden once assembled. But there have also been improvements to visible parts. The cockpit windows on the Aurora kit were single-layer transparencies, with an inner window canopy missing. Moebius have rectifi...

David Jefferis reports What about wood for a change, instead of plastic? That’s what’s on offer from the Arizona-based Airplane Modelworks outfit. Wide range from Airplane Modelworks Airplane Modelworks has a huge range of display collectibles on offer - aircraft of all sorts naturally, but also for sale are tanks and spacecraft, not forgetting some sci-fi exotica, such as the machines from Gerry Anderson’s TV series Thunderbirds and Supercar. Short on detail, long on elegance It’s important to realise that these are ready-built display models, and as such they are best used to decorate your den’s shelf or desktop. The purpose of these models is just that - display - and there is little of the intricate detail that’s available in even the cheapest plastic construction kit. But no matter, these are attractive craft objects, and work very well for their purpose. 1930s air racers Among our favourites from the Airplane Modelworks range are the many single-seaters from the days of air racin...

Mat Irvine reports Today’s the day in 1959 that test pilot Scott Crossfield took the North American X-15 rocket plane on its first flight. This was an unpowered glide only, after being dropped from under the wing of an eight-engined Boeing NB-52, and reached a speed of 840 km/h (522 mph), just ‘one small step’ compared to the X-15’s eventual record of 7274 km/h (4520 mph). Aurora makes the first X-15 kit Because of its exotic nature, the X-15 was a natural for model kit companies, especially in the early years when plastic kits were part of a new industry. One of the first such kits came from Aurora in 1959; the real craft had only just been revealed, which makes it understandable that some details were wrong. X-15 in fit-the-box scale from Revell After this came Revell’s far more accurate version, one that has survived in various releases for many years. But it had a slight problem in that it was not made to a generally accepted scale. It came from a time when many kits - especially k...