SCALE MODEL NEWS

THERE ARE PLENTY OF APOLLO KITS out there, not so many models of the Viking that landed on Mars, seven years after the first Apollo landing. Mat Irvine:  Monogram, Airfix and AMT all issued Saturn V rockets to celebrate Project Apollo, with an appropriately scaled Lunar Module (LM) on board. Airfix made the first separate kit of the Lunar Module, to 1:72 scale, and it is still a very good representation. Monogram produced a larger 1:48 scale LM, with all the paraphernalia carried by the Apollo 11 Mission, to be laid out on a textured base. The Revell 1:48 scale Apollo craft ( below from left: LM, CM and SM ). I built the trio as a retro-style display model as you might have seen on the desk of a NASA executive. Airfix 1:72 scale LM ( below ) with the astronauts and equipment supplied with the kit. The only item not relevant to Apollo 11 is the high-gain dish antenna, which wasn’t carried until Apollo 12. Apollo has also been a favourite with so-called ‘garage’ companies. Vista Repl...

Bandai from Japan has pulled out all the stops with this 1:144 scale ready-built model, featuring the various components of the nearly-disastrous Apollo 13 space mission of 1970. The Bandai 1:144 scale miniature is little short of astonishing. Every last detail seems to have been incorporated, from the damaged Service Module (SM) to a mini-diorama that features a floating Command Module (CM), a pair of divers with flotation collar, and a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter. Stage treatment The Saturn V is nicely detailed and coloured. We particularly like the treatment of the tanks within the main stage cylinders. Stacked for launch The whole Apollo assemblage can be displayed stacked and ready for flight, or you can separate the various parts into sections. For the latter, Bandai provides a set of mounts so the various Saturn V stages have no chance to roll away. The vertical display option has a base with transparent support arms, looking somewhat like the system used for real-life Russian Soyu...

Mat Irvine looks inside: Model companies can spring surprises, and such was the case when Hong Kong-based Dragon recently announced brand new 1:72 scale kits in of the Apollo craft. Anyone familiar, even in passing, with kits of space subjects will be bound to know of the Airfix Apollo Lunar Module. It was first released many years ago, but was recently reissued with updated painting instructions and details (by me!) to correct the colour scheme, which since the very beginning has been wrong. (Or maybe ‘not quite right’…) Complete Apollo spacecraft However, with the first Apollo Missions now 40-plus years old the idea of new kits of may come as something of a surprise, though on the face of it no-one turns a hair at the announcement of another Spitfire or Bf109, so on that logic why should spacecraft be different? What makes these Dragon issues especially welcome is that we don’t get just a Lunar Module (it has long been one of those modelling mysteries as to why Airfix made only the L...

David Jefferis reports: Forty two years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, while Michael Collins orbited high above in the Apollo Command Module. The Lunar Module (LM) was a four-legged aluminium-skinned contraption that was a true ‘space’ craft, designed for operation in a vacuum, with none of the smooth streamlined shape necessary for flight in a planetary atmosphere. Apollo 11 models There are various models available that commemorate the landing, including the 1:72 scale Airfix diorama kit that includes the LM, a neatly sculpted rectangle of cratered lunar terrain and logistics support in the form of surface instruments, a mixed bunch of astronauts, and Lunar Rovers. The terrain base is a good size, somewhat larger than an A4 sheet, at 348 mm (13.7 in) long x 247 mm (9.7 in). Cement, acrylic paints, and a brush are also included. Extra astronauts supplied by Airfix The Apollo 11 landing involved only Armstrong and Aldrin, so the supplied group of astronau...

SMN report The Shizuoka ‘Hobby City’ Hobby Show finished earlier this week, and there were many reveals of tempting new stuff. However, yesterday’s look at the new Dragon Type 95 tank kit allowed us to focus on this Chinese company and its wide-ranging product list. Fine detail from Dragon Dragon has looked into various technologies for its new products, including slide moulds, which allow more accurate reproduction of fine detail than standard two-piece moulds. The technique works by creating injection moulds that have built-in moving sections, the ‘slide’ of the name. These are inserted into the mould to form components, then removed for extraction.  Slide advantages Slide-moulding has two main advantages - it helps increase overall accuracy, and reduces the parts-count by adding small details directly into place on bigger components. Items that benefit from the technique include intricate patterns, gratings, one-piece hulls, and turret interiors. The extra detail available also ...