SCALE MODEL NEWS

Mat Irvine reports Just over two months ago, on June 13, 2010, the Japanese spaceprobe Hayabusa (original name MUSES-C) returned a small sample container back to Earth. Having spent seven years in space - three more than planned - Hayabusa had finally completed its unique task, to rendezvous with the asteroid Itokawa, hover there, grab a soil sample and return it to Earth. Hayabusa mission doubts The spaceprobe appears to have done most of these tasks, though there is still some doubt as to whether the return samples (the container landed in the Australian outback, near Woomera) are actually from the asteroid. However, overall it was still an amazing mission. Hayabusa model kit Also rather amazing is the fact that the Hayabusa mission inspired Aoshima to make a kit, even more so as this is only the fifth (that’s right - number five) unmanned spacecraft ever to have been made as a conventional plastic kit! I do have to add the rider that there have been a number of other non-plastic kit...

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo . David Jefferis reports The Evil Empire’s prime assault weapon during the Battle for Hoth, as featured in the Star Wars movie Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back , was the four-legged AT-AT, or All Terrain Armoured Transport. The AT-AT has been a favourite with sci-fi fans ever since, and is just one of a range of walker designs created for the Star Wars universe. Conceptually the AT-AT was a heavily-armoured assault machine, armed with lasers and blaster cannon, and with room inside to carry half a dozen speeder bikes and up to 40 Imperial Stormtroopers (surely the worst shots in the history of shoot-em-up movies). In the model world, the best kit currently available is from Revell, and this makes up into a fair representation of the Star Wars machine. There are toy versions available as well, and these have the ‘play value’ demanded by the younger market - and it’s one of these, from Hasbro, that features in the movie we show above....

Mat Irvine reports Revell Germany has just issued the ‘Ocean Exploration Vessel’ and if it looks like the original Calypso ship of Jacque Cousteau, made by Revell Inc way back in 1976, that’s because it is! The wooden-hulled Calypso has had a varied career. She was built and launched by a US yard in 1942, going into service as a minesweeper with the British Royal Navy the following year. After World War II ended, she gave service as a ferry in Maltese waters, then wa finally acquired by the Cousteau organisation in 1950, to be refitted as a floating laboratory. Birth of the Calypso model kit Revell wanted to produce a kit of the Calypso , but - according to Tom Graham’s book Remembering Revell Model Kits - it took quite a bit of persuasion. Eventually Royle Glaser, wife of Revell’s founder, Lew Glaser, organised a working breakfast with Jacques-Yves and Francine Cousteau. They realised Revell was serious about the proposal, and that sealed the deal. The ship and the plane The compa...

David Jefferis reports UK diecast fans have some very good reading matter to slake their thirst for the subject, and this month’s issue of Model Collector magazine is one of the better issues, as it includes a very nifty reader offer: a free N-gauge double-decker London bus. British scale out of step? Mind you, that red bus is to British 1:148 scale, which is not the same as the 1:160 commonly used elsewhere. But not to worry - it’s a Britbus that will look great in an appropriate layout. The freebie (you pay post and packing) is from Oxford Diecast, and there are three other offers also on the table from OC: a set each of four buses, five commercial vehicles and five cars. These all feature road transport from the ‘golden age’ 1960s-1970s era. Mind you, this writer prefers the reliability of modern stuff! Model Bus Manufacture Guide It’s a solid bus-enthusiast issue, as there’s another free item in this issue of Model Collector. It’s a neat A5-format supplement that contains lots of i...

David Jefferis reports Talking of airliner model interiors (yesterday’s post) we had already spotted such a thing at the Farnborough Air Show recently. So here are three pictures taken at the stand of the Chinese manufacturer, Comac. It’s a metre-plus long display model of the new Comac ARJ21 twin-jet. Looking inside The ARJ21 model has little of the ultrafine detail you normally expect of an injection construction kit, but the port side is transparent plastic, which allows plenty of interior features to be seen - mostly, of course, the rows of seats that fill the length of this Chinese-produced machine. If you look at the closeup (bottom pic above), there’s even a wall-hanging picture - perhaps a safety instruction poster - on the right of the entrance portal. New aspects to a familiar design The real thing is named the Xiangfeng (Chinese for ‘Soaring Phoenix’). Several prototypes have flown, and the number four aircraft is due for delivery to Chengdu Airlines in late 2010. The ARJ21 ...

David Jefferis reports There’s nothing like a speeded-up movie for revealing the secrets of how things work, and this three-minute movie is an excellent example. Of course, what you don't see is the immense amount of hard work that went into the making of it - but no matter, the result is well worthwhile. Triple Seven The subject of the movie is Boeing’s big-twin, the 777 ‘Triple-Seven’, described as his ‘favourite seat’, by an ex-BA friend of mine. The real thing has seats for more than 300 passengers, and one version - the 777 200LR - has flown more than halfway round the world non-stop. More than 860 Boeing 777s are in airline service, with the order book tally so far at 1148 aircraft. Boeing 777 models The 777 is more widely represented in the ready-built market than in construction kits, and there’s a range of them in various scales available here . A call for interesting airliner kits Having said that, for 1:144 scale enthusiasts, the Hasegawa 777 in Thai markings assembles i...

David Jefferis reports There are some interesting kits coming from the Hasegawa team at the moment, and these three cover a wide enough range to sharpen the appetites of many model makers. Giant German glider tug The Heinkel He 111Z (‘Z’ for Zwilling, meaning ‘twin’) was an attempt to provide a decent airborne tug for the huge Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant military glider. Other solutions for hauling the lumbering Gigant off the ground included using three (yes, three!) Messerschmitt Bf 110 tow planes, each pulling a steel cable while flying in precise vee-formation. Even when the Me 321 was fitted with underwing rocket boosters, takeoff was a chancy business. The Zwilling was a better solution, achieved by mating two He 111s and adding a fifth engine in the middle. Even so, the Luftwaffe never achieved an effective heavy-lift capacity, though the Zwilling was developed further, to include bomber and recon variants. Hasegawa’s big ‘Z’ The Zwilling’s 228 components assemble well, and resu...

Mat Irvine reports Things often seem to go in cycles... in the 1970s, AMT, a company better known for its automotive and Star Trek models,  issued three kits based on the designs of that true Renaissance Man, the Italian artist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci. The AMT kits were interesting in their own way, but soon disappeared from the catalogues, and a rumoured three more never materialised. New Leonardo kits But now - several decades on - the subject has gone full circle, with not one but three kit companies announcing new kits of Leonardo’s devices. Revell-Germany has announced a series of, appropriately enough, wooden kits for release later this year, while Japan’s Doyusha is issuing a series in plastic. But first to arrive - in the UK at least - are a pair of Italeri kits, reboxed from a set originated by Academy of South Korea. Working boat The Paddle Boat, also known as the Self-Propelled Boat, was a Leonardo idea that was an ancestor of the 19th paddle steamers. The kit ac...

David Jefferis reports from the show The SMN crew spent yesterday at the UK’s premier business-orientated aerospace show. The weather was fantastic (which just goes to show how useless the predictions of some iPhone weather apps are...) and it was a real pleasure to watch high-power aerobatics and more genteel flypasts in bright blue skies, with puffy clouds to set them off. Stealthy delta Highlights of the day included new aircraft like the Airbus A400M military airlifter, and old-stagers such as the delta-wing Avro Vulcan, currently maintained in flying order by an enthusiast group, and good for them. The Vulcan’s shape gave it stealth-like abilities long before stealth became a design essential for survival in aerial combat... A380 airliner For model fans, shows like this are fantastic. Wandering round the real machines parked by the flightline reveals so much detail you just never see in photos. And as for weathering, one look at the A380 demo airliner should give you airbrush mode...

Mat Irvine reports Old friend Andy Yanchus in New York, past Project Manager at Aurora, and a kit historian - with a much wider knowledge than me - points out that the Revell Germany Classic Kits reissue of the Chance Vought Cutlass F7U-3 (see SMN July 3) is not from the actual original. The very first version Revell tooled up was the F7U-1, which had a more pointed nose. In addition, and as was common with these very early kits, it had no cockpit or undercarriage. However it did have a stand, a simple two-piece design moulded in the same colour as the main parts. Added details However, Revell soon upgraded the Cutlass, along with the two other fighter kits it manufactured, the Lockheed Starfire and Grumman Cougar. These featured ‘new-fangled’ details, such as a cockpit and undercarriage. At the same time, the Cutlass tooling was changed to the later version, which had the more rounded nose. Revell swivel stand At the same time, Revell replaced the original stands with a transparent ty...

David Jefferis reports Here’s some interesting information for British model fans - the ModelZone chain is adding new outlets to its already extensive number of stores. The new expansion will cover Birmingham, Ipswich, Leicester and Glasgow, with more to come. It’s an encouraging sign that points the way to a good future for the hobby. Wide range at ModelZone ModelZone markets a wide array of miniatures, from plastic kits and model trains to sci-fi collectibles and slot-car racers. There isn’t a vast range in any particular genre, but the sheer variety means that there is a tasty ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ flavour to these stores, and it’s almost impossible to leave without purchasing something pleasing. An exploration is highly recommended! Airfix Fighter Collection Among products available at the moment is the Airfix 1:72 scale ‘Fighter Collection’ set, featuring five World War II aircraft: four Spitfires of various types, plus a Hawker Hurricane and a big stand. As you can see from the pic, ...

Mat Irvine reports From around 1955, one of the mainstays of the US Army’s military might in Europe was the surface-to-surface Corporal ballistic missile, the first such to carry a nuclear warhead. The 139 km (86 mile) range Corporal looked sleek and functional, but in reality was very unreliable and took a large number of personnel to ready it for launch. But the Corporal did prove an ideal subject for the early Revell company’s growing range of space and missile kits, and it now stars as another of Revell-Germany’s Classic Kit range reissues. Uniquely, Revell issued the kit in two forms, one of which consisted of the missile and launcher, with three crew and a stand-alone tracking station; it’s this kit that Revell-Germany has reissued, using the original box-art as a centrepiece, with the ‘Classic Kits’ medallion added. These types of kit had to have ‘working parts’, so the launcher’s support arms were designed to be foldable, the transporting road wheels can be unsnapped, and suppo...

Mat Irvine reports Aeronautical designers have a history of fascination with aircraft that are round - in the ‘flying saucer’ sense. There have been dozens of designs over the years, though the vast majority have been impractical, were ‘paper projects’, or would likely never have flown even if a prototype had been built. Flying Discs However, flying saucer planes remain fascinating, and specialist model producer Allen Ury, who runs Fantastic Plastic, has slaked his enthusiasm for these bizarre designs with a kit of the US Air Force ‘40 foot Flying Disc’, a design that was supposedly proposed in the 1960s. As Allen says on his website: “In 1967, former US Navy aviator and aviation writer Jack D. Pickett and his business partner Harold Baker visited MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, to gather information for an Air Force-sponsored article on historical experimental aircraft.  At the edge of the base, they were shown four decommissioned X-planes - all of them flying discs - me...