SCALE MODEL NEWS

  IN COVID LOCKDOWN, many modellers do not have the excuse ‘I’ve nothing to do.’ Backing this up, model suppliers report that they’ve never been busier, and helpful gadgets have been hot sellers in 2020. Mat Irvine:  Living in Lockdown means there may well be plenty of time available for work on modelling projects. But none of us are getting any younger, and age often means that our eyes lose some of their ability to focus on small and fiddly model components. And here’s when you realise that a bit of help might come in useful. I realised this recently, when dealing with some tiny photo-etch parts. I tried two sets of closeup glasses, one on top of the other, a solution which did work but was rather cumbersome in use. So I contacted colleague Paul Fitzmaurice of Modelling Tools, who said, “Try this”, ‘this’ being a Lightcraft Standard Headband Magnifier Kit.  The kit consists of a headband with a visor, to which you can fit one of a set of four lenses, which provide a gra...

  THIS WEEK SAW the annual Airfix Competition 2020, organised by Peter Chiang, of Hobby Bounties in Singapore. Due to the Covid-19 and the Singapore Air Force Museum being closed, it was held online at Facebook, under the Hobby Bounties’ event 'mini-Airfix Cup 2020.' The pictures ( header, below ) are the entries from John Bartram from Sydney, Australia.   1. Airfix 1:144 Boeing Clipper Flying Boat, 1964 mould. 2. Airfix 1:72 Lysander, old original mould. 3. Airfix Hawker Hurricane MkI, old original mould. 4. Airfix 1:72 scale CAC Boomerang, old original mould.   Also included is a photo of Ng  Keng Leong’s F-51D Mustang. Plenty  more information,  pictures, and of course the winners, are to be found at the dedicated Hobby Bounties Airfix Cup web page.  Our personal favourite is the Batwing, which started out as a  standard Airfix Curtiss Tomahawk kit. It's nice enough out of the box, but the conversion to Bat-status by M. Razali Ahmad is original...

AIRPLANE-SCALE TANKS are go in this well-crafted video. The British Crusader cruiser tank featured is made to 1:48 scale, resulting in a model that is just over five inches (131 mm) long. Nice!

THE NEW SEASON OF THE EXCELLENT Mandalorian has the usual range of sci-fi effects, characters, and models. And some of these depend on the old techniques of actual model making.   This video shows just a few of the ways to make a state of the art video series using a variety of methods, including good use of modelling skills. Enjoy!

NIFTY VIDEO SHOWING  a model aircraft collection, and the neat shelving built for the display. Worth looking for a collective sigh of nostalgia. For example, there's a beautifully made Fairey Rotodyne in one corner, one of our fave machines of all time. 

IN 1986 WE GOT we got the hugely successful movie Top Gun . Next, what will be 35 years later (the film release is due in 2021) we should see the follow-up  Top Gun: Maverick . The star of the first movie, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise), returns again, but now plays the role of a flight instructor. Mat Irvine: The original movie featured a number of aircraft, so was a natural for model kit producers, their catalogues already being full of such craft. Consequently a number of kits appeared, though from Airfix and Testors, not Revell. This time, Revell is involved, with six kits overall – individual and sets, simple and more complex, and this 1:48 scale F/A-18. It’s a re-boxing of an existing Revell kit, but comes with appropriate decals for the movie machine. The kit is top of the range, coming under Revell’s Level 5 for build and construction. There’s a detailed cockpit interior with 11 separate decals that need applying. There’s a detailed undercarriage which is intended to...

  IT’S HALLOWEEN AGAIN and here’s a chance to look at a kit that definitely fits the idea of ‘spooky.’  Mat Irvine:  I’m in the process of writing a book on dioramas, and for one of the chapters there’s a look at kits that already come as a diorama. And this kit from Polar Lights certainly fits the bill.  The Polar Lights model started out as an Aurora kit way back in 1965, but was on sale for less than a year. Most Aurora tooling originally ended up with Monogram, and Monogram did reissue some kits, but nothing like the whole of the range. Some tools were also licensed to other companies, so we did see again kits that Aurora had made, but which hadn’t seen the light of day for many years. Then we jump forward several decades, and the idea of ‘lost Aurora’ model companies started to emerge. Only two ever really fulfilled the promise though, those being Polar Lights and Moebius, which have created kits that Aurora might have made, but that it actually did not....

MATTHEW TEEVAN IS AN illustrator who shows his work on Art Station, an online centre for the visual creatives community. SMN report:  In Matthew Teevan's words: "I like to build models in my spare time, and grew up on plastic model kits, Airfix, Revell, Matchbox and Aurora kits. Some wishful thinking here in the form of fantasy what-if box-top artwork. Also some wishful thinking on movies that could have – and should have – been made!" We say, well done Matthew – there's plenty here we'd like to spend our Autumn nights constructing. THUNDERBIRD 2 ( header, below ) We can all dream of a top of the line, large-scale Airfix Thunderbird 2. As the scale size was imagined as being more than 76 m (250 ft) long, even a 1:144 scale kit would be a biggish build, some 530 mm (20.8 in) in length when assembled. RTL 2 ( below ) This was a supersonic transporter that appeared in the Thunderbirds episode,  The Cham-Cham . At 1:144 scale it would be some 457 mm (18 in) long. MAC’...