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...

Weekender with Mat Irvine: The 1:24 scale Gemini spacecraft was one of Revell’s most popular space kits of the 1960s, and now, if you missed the last reissue in 2000, it’s available once more in the 'Revell Classics' range. Different shades The 88-part kit remains pretty much as first issued in 1965, except that this time round, you get components moulded in white. In the past, the Revell Gemini has usually been supplied in dark or mid-grey styrene, though dark-blue and even light-blue versions have been reported. There have been white ones too - when the kit was issued as a ‘History Maker’ in 1982 - but these appear to be rare, or restricted to kits issued in Europe. Incidentally, for this reissue Revell scanned my original box, to use the artwork with the new design.  The parts are the same as before, but are now moulded in white. A few ‘The History Makers’ issues were also in white. Spacecraft in white White parts do make painting easier though, as two of the three real spa...