SCALE MODEL NEWS

SMN report With the news of an Earth-type alien world being found - the exoplanet Gliese 581g - it’s worth remembering the physicist Stephen Hawking’s warning that intelligent ETs might not be friendly. And that of course was the theme of English author HG Wells’s masterwork The War of the Worlds . Music and Martians So when Mat Irvine’s colleague Nick Argento of Glencoe Models sent a link to a stop-frame animation of this classic invasion story, we had to look it up. What a hoot, and the classical music scores fit well with the subject too. The humans are ringers for Action Man and Co, while the Martian tripod models (you can see them in action at the 4:03 timing mark) are pretty convincing, and a reminder of the splendid artwork printed in Classics Illustrated many years ago. See Glencoe Models here . View a Pegasus Hobbies Martian here . Visit the Classics Illustrated War of the Worlds graphic novel here .

David Jefferis reports The modelmasters at Tamiya are excelling themselves these days, and for 1:48 scale model fans, here are some items heading our way that are well up to scratch. Tamiya Fairey Swordfish The first is an absolutely jaw-dropping Fairey Swordfish floatplane, to add to the existing 1:48 examples in the Tamiya lineup. This one seems to have outperformed everything else that the company has produced along these lines. The 250 mm (9.8 in) long British World War II naval aircraft is packed with detail that includes excellent crew figures, a centreline torpedo, hardpoints for underwing stores, and a pair of beaching trolleys for those shapely floats. There’s also a metal-etch fret set available for adding the rigging neatly, though the less than super-dextrous (aka DJ) may be best to leave that alone. Tamiya Jagdtiger Matching the Swordfish for scale is a German Jagdtiger heavy tank, with a length of 219 mm (8.6 in). The kit includes three figures, though these are torsos on...

Mat Irvine reports Mike Mackowski is a long-time space modeller and one of the main members of the online Yahoo ‘Space Modelers’ group. Over some years now, Mike has compiled seven hardcopy books especially for modellers on spacecraft topics, including titles for Gemini, Mercury and two volumes on Apollo, one for the Command Service Module and one for the Lunar Module. Now he has produced his first ‘Tech Report’, a series intended to be shorter and to be available only as a download, thus having the advantage that they can be in colour. Skylab details Tech Report #1.0 (TR1) is on Skylab, prompted by Mike’s particular interest in America’s first space station. Mike worked for a time at McDonnell Douglas in St Louis, where Skylab’s airlock module was built. Previously he had spent time as a student at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Skylab trainer was housed. He was also at Marshall when Skylab was actually launched in 1973. What’s in the TR1 pdf TR1 ...

SMN report Italeri’s latest 1:35 scale nautical kit is the neatly produced Biber (‘Beaver’) one-man midget submarine from World War II. To this big military-model standard scale, even the Biber works out to a fair size in model form, in this case some 186 mm (7.3 in) long. It comes with two well-sculpted figures, as well as decals for three different subs, and a small etched-metal fret with super-detail parts. Biber on view at the Imperial War Museum There are quite a few Bibers on display in military museums across Europe - the one pictured above is on view in the UK’s Imperial War Museum, London. It’s a place well worth visiting, and if you build the Italeri Biber kit, seeing the real thing complete with its quota of lumps, bumps, scrapes, dings and dents, will allow you to add those extra details to take the Italeri sub from smooth-but-a-bit-dull ‘stock’ to knocked-about-and-real ‘superb’. Biber armament In service, the Biber could carry two 530 mm (21 in) torpedos or a pair of mine...

SMN report It’s one thing to enjoy a beautiful collector’s item dating back 70 years or more, but you have a tale of doom and gloom if it starts falling apart before your very eyes. And it can happen, thanks to the curse of ‘zinc pest’, a form of corrosion that can affect diecast toys manufactured anytime from the 1930s to early 1950s. Zinc pest explained Zinc corrosion is caused when the metal has been mixed with impure lead, and it may be accelerated by damp, and big changes in temperature. Once the pest hits, it’s unstoppable, and over time the affected item cracks, buckles, and eventually falls to pieces. There’s no cure as such, because the fault lies in the zinc-lead mixture itself. The only real answer is to steer clear of any model that shows the slightest sign of it. Dinky Toys Empire boat The 1930s-era Dinky Toy shown above, a Short Empire flying boat, displays the sad destruction wrought by the pest - as you can see, it’s nasty stuff! Luckily, modern manufacturing processes,...

SMN report There’s little doubt that in these difficult financial times, it pays to have some form of savings scheme beyond a bank account and a pension company. And for model fans that can be a pleasure, combining financial commonsense with a hobby, for unbuilt kits and diecasts represent pretty decent items to have in your portfolio. Rare Dinky Toys Of the two, diecasts show the most spectacular prices, with auctions regularly achieving astonishing levels - even in a recession, or perhaps especially in a recession, prices hold firm and there have been bidding wars between individuals and fund managers at some salerooms. Dinky Toys in particular are a high achiever where values are concerned, with models from small production runs being very highly prized. Examples include the Avro Vulcan jet V-bomber, of which only 500 or so were released, or virtually anything from the mid-1930s to 1943, when Dinky production stopped for three years until after the end of World War II. Dinky prices ...

David Jefferis reports I was at a literary get-together at Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, UK, on Friday - and one of the few men in an audience of ‘ladies who lunch’. It was actually quite a treat, especially the joke-cracking platform speakers, a trio of high-powered TV comediennes who opened doors into a female world I barely knew existed... ‘size zero’, ‘control pants’ anyone?! Battle of Blenheim But Blenheim’s real story is a military one - the place was built from 1704-1724 to commemorate the Duke of Marlborough’s victory at the Battle of Blenheim in Bavaria, Germany (incidentally, they spell it ‘Blindheim’ over there). So it was a pleasure to find cases of beautifully executed military modelmaking after the chick-lit ladies had finished. There were dozens of miniatures to drool over, and even my companion Jules was impressed with the workmanship. Wide-ranging models Subjects ranged across the military spectrum, also including a family group of the Romanovs, the royal family ousted...

SMN report Today is the anniversary of the 1950 Battle of Incheon, a two-day United Nations amphibious assault that was a defining moment in the Korean War, and led to the liberation of Seoul, present-day capital of the Republic of Korea. UN forces were commanded by the famed General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, in an attack that was not the easiest to mount because by 1950, the US Marine Corps had been cut back to about 27,000 troops, less than 10 percent of its World War II strength. Korean theme And this year, the Northeast Military Modelers Association has made ‘Korea: The Forgotten War’ its theme for the two-day model show IPMS AMPSEast in Danbury, Connecticut, on September 24-25. The NMMA reckons the show will be the largest model show in that part of the US, and the event will include 80 vendor tables, eight seminars, and the ‘famous monster raffle’ - which sounds great! Military Museum to visit There’s also the excellent Military Museum of Southern New England nearby, so maki...

  SMN report The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray - we’re not supposed to use ‘Chevy’ according to some recent (and misguided) PR rules, we’re told - has been in production since 1952 (yes, 1952!) and it’s been an all-American performance-car love affair ever since. After six design generations in various body styles, the car is still going strong, and as you can see from the video above there’s no shortage of ideas for many more years to come. Which is great, as it’s one of this writer’s all-time fave road rippers. This week’s Amazon offer So it’s ‘yes please’ to this week’s Amazon offer of a 40 percent discount on the Scalextric 1:32 scale race version of driver Steve MacDonald’s 2008 car. To be honest, the ’Vette is not the ultimate best from Scalextric, but for scale model fans willing to put in some effort, it’s definitely a masterwork in waiting, as the basics are pretty much there, with the general shape being captured quite decently. Adding detail to the Corvette However, the dr...

SMN report Here’s a mouthwatering taste of things to come for science-fiction enthusiasts - Douglas Trumbull, the special-effects supervisor for the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey is working on a ‘making of’ docu-movie 2001: Beyond the Infinite , which will include heaps of never-seen-before material, plus dozens of star interviews. His interesting video seems to have been pulled from the internet, perhaps for copyright reasons, but Trumbull's own site is packed with interesting stuff that anyone with an interest in the genre should have a look at. The address is shown below. Orion spacecraft kits In the model world, the movie has been served less well, especially by the mainstream kit manufacturers. About the only injection kits to be freely available have been of the elegant Orion passenger shuttle, with models from both Airfix and Aurora. Neither kit is perfect, but each will assemble into a reasonably handsome spacecraft model. Orion Cargoship from Stargazer Models Still, th...

Mat Irvine reports The Munster Koach is one of the most famous ‘Star Cars’ ever built, and was the main mode of transport for Herman Munster, the Frankenstein-lookalike husband in the 1960s family sitcom, The Munsters. The real-life Koach used in the series was built by George Barris, self-styled ‘King of the Kustomizers’ (his spelling), from three Ford Model T-bucket bodies. It sits on a custom chassis, with hand-formed brass radiator and scrollwork, and stretches 5.5 m (18 ft) in length. Power comes from a 289 cu in Ford Cobra engine, bored out to 425 cu in, with a four-speed stick shift. All in all, the Munster Koach was certainly large enough to transport the five members of the Munster family in style. It still exists too - you can see it at the UK’s Cars of the Stars Museum. AMT Koach kit AMT was quick to produce a 1:25 kit of the Koach, which first appeared in 1964 and although one of the simpler kits compared to many of the company’s offerings, it still looked the part when bui...

SMN report It’s busy times at Revell at the moment, and two recent releases are 2009-season V8-engined Audi A4 track cars, representing the ones driven by Tom Kristensen (red markings) and Championship winner Timo Scheider (blue). These are neatly produced kits, each measuring 204 mm (8 in) long when assembled, with 126 components to put together. Inside the box Revell’s kit engineers have packed in plenty of detail, from the rear spoiler to a complete engine, with access to it when finished via a removable cover panel. Chrome parts are included, though these need to be a little less shiny to look the part in a racer - left as supplied, they’d look better on a street-smart pimpmobile. Still, that’s easy enough to achieve with one light coat of satin spray. The cabin is neatly done, and is fitted with the race-essential roll bar, plus you get very neatly printed decals for two versions, and free-spinning wheels. To sum up, a pair of kits that are well worth adding to any race car fan’s ...

Mat Irvine reports Recently I looked at the Aoshima 1:32 scale Hayabusa spaceprobe kit, but had to add the rider that as soon as it was issued, it appeared to have been withdrawn. This was a great shame for, as I said then, conventional injection kits of satellites and spaceprobes - as against rockets and manned spaceflight - were extremely few and far between. Hayabusa in the shops But it’s now it's back, as reported by Hobby Link Japan, the company that had kindly supplied the sample kit. So for those of you who missed it first time around, you now have a second chance to experience this detailed kit, from the neatly-engraved solar panels and sensors to the thruster engines and antenna dish. Interesting stand The asteroid-shaped stand is a bonus too, with the tiny Minerva sub-satellite shown landed on the surface, though this was an event which did not succeed on the mission itself. The stand's shape echoes that of Hayabusa’s target, asteroid Itokawa, a chunk of space rock so...