SCALE MODEL NEWS

FROG KITS OF THE BRITISH ships HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales were recently modelled by entrants for a competition held in Singapore. SMN report from Peter JK Chiang, for Hobby Bounties, Singapore: We also had a book signing by the author GoH Yong Kiat ( below ) for his newly published title Defending our Skies . This is a pictorial history book that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF). We made an award for our FROG 1:600 scale HMS  Repulse  and  Prince of Wales  competition ( below ). The winners were ( below, right to left ) Ng Kheng Leong (3rd), Timothy Leong (1st) and M Razali Ahmad (2nd).   The FROG 1:32 scale MiG-15 made a good prize, and I will enjoy seeing the finished aircraft. We also had our annual Airfix competition not too long ago, in November 2017. Here are four of the excellent models in that competition ( below ). Ed: We hope to show more from Singapore soon.

THE TRIDENT SINGLE-SEAT RESEARCH PLANE is the subject of Jean-Christophe ‘JC’ Carbonel’s second book exploring French aviation projects. Mat Irvine : JC first dealt with the Coleoptere vertical takeoff machine, and now he tackles the shapely Trident, a design from Sud-Aviation for a mixed power, rocket-assisted interceptor. The book contains what has to be virtually every illustration, photo and diagram of the project. The main text is in French, but the images have extended captions in English, which is my connection with the book, as I wrote them for JC. The experimental Trident was powered by two wingtip turbojets, plus a rocket engine in the tail. Twelve Tridents were built and flown during the early 1950s, though the whole project was cancelled in 1957. Besides JC's exhaustive history of the Trident, he also explores the popular culture that surrounded it, as he includes four colour pages showing the aircraft in fiction.   Then there are seven pages of model kits that have bee...

Talking of airliner models, this delightful old ad for Frog airliners turned up recently. For some reason I thought all Frog airliners were made to the same 1:96 scale - but no, there's variety there, though nowhere near the profusion of fit-the-box scales (more like non-scales) that were popular at the time with makers such as Revell, Lindberg and others. The subjects in the Frog ad are all European designs, except for the Boeing 707. Maybe it's time for an enterprising manufacturer to revisit the past with standard-scale kits of aviation classics such as the Sud Aviation Caravelle, or the Vickers Viscount. Detailed up to present-day standards, with interiors and maybe even some airport ground equipment, they could be a popular choice - as for me, I'd just luurve a Comet IV with a transparent fuselage side, fully detailed engines and interior, plus a flight deck ( below ) including the navigator's station ( bottom ). Such extras (oh go on then, let's have lighting ...

Mr J REPORT: I can remember my very first airliner kit, a 1:96 scale Frog de Havilland Comet IV. The kit came with minimal detail, but did have looong decal strips for the fuselage sides, and a daunting amount of white paint was needed to cover the upper surface. After much careful application of tape, on went the paint and, well, to my chagrin much of it seeped underneath, and the kit was never the same again. I soon learned to mask with the best of them, but somehow never really returned to airliners with any degree of enthusiasm! How I wish I'd had the facilities shown here for a Thomson Airways revamp from old insignia to swoopy new markings. I wish!