To Detail or Not to Detail, That is the Question...

I have long fancied scratchbuilding the mighty MBT-70 Main Battle Tank under development as a joint US/German project in the late 1960s. The pre-production prototype batch demonstrated great potential, and a number of its innovations appeared in other tanks on both sides of the Atlantic, but the vehicle itself was too ambitious, too costly and too unreliable. It is a long, low, mean-looking tank with unusual features, such as a driver in a stabilised cockpit in the turret, and a secondary cannon which could be operated from within. I have long pursued research, trying to untangle the differing running gear details of the US and West German versions, and one way I tried to do this was to find Aurora’s old 1:48th scale kit on eBay, to see in three dimensions how the repetitive detailing of the unique hydropneumatic suspension system was handled.

I was somewhere between surprised and disgusted when I discovered that Aurora’s solution to all that complex detail was to ignore it. No suspension detail was offered at all, which makes the kit a somewhat expensive and rather pointless addition to my stash (joining the eBay sell-on pile…) Back to the drawing board on the MBT-70 project, but that absence of detail set me thinking.

What constitutes a necessary detail for a kit?

Knowledgeable folk will tell you that not a single truly accurate and representative F/A-18 model exists in 1:72nd scale, and that is more than likely true of just about every subject, but it must be a matter of degree. Detail appropriate to the scale is a major consideration, as the resolution of detail reproduction will make it clumsy to try to include some details when they become too small. Go to the other end of the spectrum and consider the older kits in which detail in the wheel wells, even the cockpit was considered unnecessary. In the 1970s Airfix’s 1:24th scale ‘superkits’ were something of a benchmark, but while they featured significant cockpit detail (not actually complete, it should be noted), they featured no wheel well detail at all, simply the open interior of the wing with a mechanical pivot for the gimmicky retractable landing gear.

Then there’s the odd notion of including things in the kit that aren’t there on the real thing, in the name of marketability, or having to add a detail and making a genuine mess in the process. I’m thinking of the tile pattern grid Revell added to their 1:72nd scale Space Shuttle back in the 1980s… A truly overscale raised grid to represent the actually recessed micro-fine division between the ceramic tiles of the craft’s hull… I'm sure the 1:72nd scale raised representation was actually larger than the 1:1 scale recessed reality, which goes to show what accuracy counts for compared to the young buyer's expectation that something as important as the thermal tiles must be there, whether it's visible or not. The company engraved the moulds, the same approach as raised panel lines, and just as inaccurate, though compounded by the regularity of the grid over the craft’s surface. I had that kit, bought it for a great price, but a few years later I sold it on, unopened. Why? I just could not bring myself to build a hypersonic flying machine with a rugose hull texture that would shame a rhinoceros, any more than I could see my way to laboriously removing the entire grid and rescribing it. Had Revell left well alone I might have got up the chutzpah to try scribing the grid (though I’d probably have made a mess and ended up refilling it and trying some sort of paint trick, spraying through a mesh perhaps, which I once saw done to great effect on the 1:144th scale orbiter.) As it stands, though I would love a large scale shuttle, there’s no way I’d tackle the Revell offering, even with my current skill level.

I’m not entirely sure but this beast may have been retooled to switch the grid to recessed, but it would still have been way overscale. Decal company Cutting Edge went a long way to rectifying the whole accuracy problem for Orbiters with decal versions of the heat shield areas, and accurised engines and window painting masks were also produced, way back in 2003. Check them out:

http://decals.kitreview.com/decals/ced44001decaplreviewbg_1.htm

So where should a kit company draw the line between what needs to be there and what needs to not be there? My gut feeling is that if the detail is recessed, recess it, and if the detail is visible at the equivalent scale viewing distance, it should be on the model. That’s a fair yardstick, with plenty of wiggle-room, and I think the best companies are probably working around just such philosophies now. Perhaps that’s called learning from the past, standing on the shoulders of yesterday’s industry and building on not just their experiences but the consequences of their choices. Models certainly look better, right out of the box, now than they ever have before, even if they are not ‘accurate’ in the sense that purists use the term. And yes, the gentle art of ‘rivet-counting’ will be another topic!

Warning — Rant: After-Market Parts and the Cynicism of Gilding the Lilly

 

 I have Revell’s classic 1:48th scale Grumman Cougar on the shelf. It’s the only time that this subject has been done in this scale. The copyright of the edition is 1985 but the kit engineering is a good twenty years earlier. It has raised surface detail, including the so-popular rivets of the time, not much going on inside the intakes, and a single piece cockpit insert combining pilot, seat, floor, panel and detail behind the seat (which, to be fair, is more than many got in those days). It ohh-soo needs a resin cockpit, and resin wheel well inserts, and some of those Seamless Suckers to back the intakes, not to mention weighted tires and maybe a crystal clear vacform hood that can be posed open, a set of vinyl masks, and of course a wide selection of marking options released by the decal guys.

Where are they?

There’s an echoing void. I can sand back the detail and rescribe the bird, sure, and I could use Panther accessories (assuming they’ve been produced for the newer Trumpeter Panther), and piece together my markings from generic sheets, masks and careful paintwork. Yes, that’s a valid approach, and nothing a modeller wouldn’t have to do if the AM industry was less active than it is. My point is just that: the AM industry is volatile in its ability to churn out product, but the choice of product and how it is marketed seem to play—cynically—only to certain parts of the hobby. 

 The pics above are the collection of AMs I put together for a single project. I know what you’re thinking – for a bloke who complains about AMs, I seem to have a lot of them. And I’m not really complaining, just having a bit of a whinge… I mean, where would we be without companies like Eduard, Legends, Verlinden, Mig Productions, Coree and the like? It could be said Francios Verlinden started the AM industry thirty years ago, giving modellers things they really wanted (to make up for the shortfalls in commercial kits between affordable practicality and actual accuracy). That was a great thing, and transformed the hobby, allowing more modellers to build truly spectacular models without needing to evolve the skills of a master machinist with infinite time and resources to do so.

The market proved to be an accommodating one, and the quality race was on: the kit companies raised their own game, in one generation injection molded plastic has gone from often clunky to often breathtaking, and the resin and photoetch guys have kept pace, not simply providing alternatives but striving to correct and outdo their plastic counterparts.

Yet there comes a point when this process becomes cynical.

 Tasca burst on the injection mold scene in 2003 with a Panzer II in 1:35th scale, and reviewers ran out of superlatives... Not just accuracy of outline and a high parts count, with individual molding of detail parts for maximum accuracy and realism, but a fineness of detail resolution never seen before (and probably nowhere else even now), such as butterfly bolts (wingnuts) rendered in actual, crisp detail though the parts were less than 1mm in size. The model featured working plastic torsion bar suspension, something done elsewhere since (AFV Club’s Tiger I, IIRC, featured the same), but which at the time was a jaw-dropper. Surely no finer or more ambitious plastic engineering had ever been attempted, and what more could a modeller ask for? Especially at the comparably high price the kit commanded (and still does).

Well, after-markets. You have to have a photoetched detail set to make it better... Or so say the guys who make them, and have the gall to offer an expensive fret of etched metal because the reviewers who raved about the kit were obviously wrong to praise it so highly. Hey, scrape away that incredible styrene molding, stick on some of our metal, then it’ll really be accurate!

 You see the same thing with aircraft. The finest kits are the ones for which ‘updates’ are offered, or corrections, kits which already feature some of the best components on the market and build into pretty darn good models just as they are, while older, or more affordable, kits that could really do with a helping hand, are pretty much ignored. True Details produced a host of fine parts for a wide variety of subjects many years ago, but their productivity has been much lower in recent times, and that could be symptomatic of the same thing: the marketplace that must have its AMs doesn’t buy cheapy kits and oldies to start with, and we can expect the AM companies to have done painstaking market research to properly target their products. 

It is as it is. If you want to make an expensive kit even more expensive then they’re ready and willing to take your money -- that’s the nature of a commercial enterprise. And it’s true that there are modern kits which do indeed fall down on the job: Trumpeter’s new 1:32nd scale Grumman Bearcat faired pretty well in it’s review in the pages of FineScale Modeler, but others were not so kind to it, one English magazine’s build-up feature laid bare the bones of that particular skeleton and after that I lost my enthusiasm for scraping together the asking price. Maybe with a comprehensive AM set to fix the problems it might be worth the effort, if such a set could correct the engineering deficiencies of, for instance, the wingfolds (perfect if depicting them folded, but the fit is hopeless for the extended configuration, which is, after all, the most likely form in which most buyers would choose to depict the aircraft).

I guess the point I’m making is simply this: while I acknowledge that the top end of the market is a legitimate place to play to, it would be nice if the AM guys aimed a bit lower at times too. Not necessarily that old Cougar, she’s a rarity these days, of course she is (to tell the truth it’s an awful kit by modern standards, and in the cold light of day I don’t think it’s actually worth saving!), and any product must have a big enough potential market to justify its existence. But bits and pieces to trick out kits that actually need it would be nice. (And yes, Eduard and others have gone round and diligently produced PE sets for, e.g., thirty-year old Tamiya armour, which blunts my argument somewhat, even if the sets are often more expensive than prices at which you can pick up the kits!)

But I like the Quickboost approach best: replacement parts for an ever-growing range of items, with superior detail at an affordable price, and so light-weight they mail for free from many companies... Yeah, now there’s my idea of an AM outfit!

Rant over, normal services will be resumed as of the next post!

New Life for an Old Classic

 Plastic modelling has been around now for over half a century, and one thing that well-cared-for molds have is shelf-life. One thinks of old molds ‘showing their age,’ but that is perhaps more to do with the sheer number of pulls taken from them. If they’re properly stored, in a moisture-free environment, tooled steel should last, and it seems it does.

Lately Revell have been reissueing early kits under the ‘Classics’ label, in limited editions of 5000 pressings. This is probably the same group of molds returned to service about 15 or 20 years ago as the ‘History Makers’ series. Revell’s 1:40th scale armour, originals of which have fetched high prices on the second hand market, seem to be putting in an appearance, and I was recently lucky enough to pick up their Nike Hercules missile for a good price from an eBay trader. 

 

 I find myself very impressed: the packaging reproduces the classic artwork, the instructions are Revell-standard, the decals are beautifully printed, and the molds seem to have lost nothing for their fifty years in storage. The model is blown in dark green styrene, and quite a large finished article is packed in a smallish box. 

I first saw this model in what looks like a company promotional photo (note the classic packaging, it’s the same painting on a differently shaped box) in a book dated 1961 (below) and have wanted one ever since. I’m really glad to have found this one. It will build as a very nice companion piece to Trumpeter’s 1:35th scale SA-2 Dvina missile, the direct contemporary of the Hercules in the same role. The scales are close enough to display them together without one overshadowing the other.

   

Like the Dvina, the Hercules was built in huge numbers and served a very long time. The new instruction sheet, dated 2009, states that between service introduction in 1958 (when it replaced the Ajax, becoming America’s second SAM system) and its retirement from domestic service in 1978, 25, 550 units were built. While that may not rival SA-2 production, it is a gigantic investment in a weapon system which, whether conventionally or nuclear-armed, was never fired in anger. Its value as a deterrent, however, must have been considerable, as with a climb envelope of 150, 000 feet and a speed at propulsion burn-out typically around Mach 3.65, oncoming bomber formations would be sitting ducks.

I see lots of rivets, as was standard detailing at the time, and I’ll have to research the real missile to see what was actually visible. It strikes me I might sand away the rivets before assembly, possibly redrilling some or all if I can find a fine enough bit, and if photographs show them contrasting with the gloss white finish. I’ll be most interested to see how this old classic builds, and one day perhaps come across other examples to depict at different points in the weapon’s service lifetime, or even create a battery diorama. I hope the re-release sees an enthusiastic response, and that Revell will be encouraged to release more of their early subjects in rejuvenated form. (I would love to build their 1:40th scale Scissors Bridge, the bridge-layer based on the M48 Patton-series MBT chassis.)

Here are some great research links for the Nike Hercules missile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Hercules

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike

Ed Thelen's Nike Missile Web Site

Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles,

MIM-14 

The Nike Missile System, A Concise Historical Overview

Index of Nike-Hercules Photographs

The Nike Site

These are some highlights. Just Google “Nike-Hercules missile,” there’s lots more out there!