Kits That Build Themselves (Almost)

Late in 2009 I built Tamiya’s old StuG IV kit (35087) and was delighted with the easy-build characteristics of the 1970s approach to kit engineering. Dragon sophistication had not come into the world, but Dragon over-complexity had also yet to appear, and notions like slide moulding were a technical phantasm. As I’ve mentioned on occasion, while the armour kits of the 70s leave a lot to be desired by modern standards, they also had the virtue of buildability, and before the advent of Dragon, Tamiya’s only real competitiors were Esci/ERTL and odd offerings from Heller, plus the 1:32nd scale range from Monogram and the 1:40th scale series from Revell.

I recently found the urge to build another Tamiya StuG IV, this time the Academy issue of 1987 (from the period when a batch of older Tamiya kits fleshed out their range for market impact before their own product really got rolling). The factory example photographed for the box shows a very attractive fall ’44 ‘Ambush’ scheme complete with blowing leaves, but the markings (for what appears to be the Grossdeutschland Division, going by the helmet motif) are not included. Academy scanned Tamiya’s plans, rearranged the drawings and renumbered the parts, rather a pointless exercise if it was meant to disguise the origins of the kit, all of which rendered the plans confusing in places. I built from Tamiya plans, and referred to the Academy plans merely for part numbers on the rare occasions I couldn’t recognise them instantly.



This is a very simple kit, but its 217 components would have been an impressive total in the 70s. What strikes me about it is how easy the build is. This example fell together in about four sittings, even wasting time I doubt I spent more than five hours from go before I was encountering the need for paint. The moulds were showing their age, some parts needed extra filing and fiddling to get them to line up, some separation lines were pretty heavy, especially in the suspension, but these issues were par for the course in the 70s anyway, and compared to the Dragon StuG III F/8 I’ve had underway since last year, this one built in a blink. The indie-link Ostketten on that one put me off every time I think about them.

One unusual thing, there is a gap about .060” wide between the idler axle components. The rooting of the parts, moulded onto the transom, is supposed to fit against the outer axle parts which are cast with the main tub, but the parts sit back, with a pronounced cutaway. This element does not appear on the original Tamiya kit, I just checked the one in my display case and it’s not there. So did Academy retool and introduce this change for some bizarre reason? The parts do not look soft and ‘blobby’ as they would if they had been three-dimensionally traced with a pantograph. I have Academy’s issue of the Panzer IV H with stand-off armour, originally Tamiya 35057, and this difference does not appear in the transom plate of this essentially identical kit (identical as far as these components are concerned, certainly). Whatever, that left me with gaps where none should be and axle roots that don’t look convincing.



Given that it’s not the easiest part of the vehicle to see, I decided a perfect fix was not required, and sufficed to shim the gap with a sliver of 4.8mm tubing to create a mechanical illusion of completeness. A proper fix would have been to shim it with sheet plastic and carve the plastic to match the structures adjoining, and this would have been possible before assembly, but that much knife and file work when there are finished structures in close proximity seemed like asking for trouble. This is a simple build, I want it finished, not living on my bench. Filling in the slots behind the axle mounts with strip plastic was also a simple enough process, and created the impression once again of mechanical detail, barely-seen.

Modelling is meant to be about fun, and the simplicity of the engineering lends itself to prompt assembly while the age of the moulds inescapably exercises the skill muscles to compensate. In that much, it’s a good mix. The artistic muscles come next: I’ve never done an ‘Ambush’ scheme before, and have not dialled the airbrush down for tight soft-edge freehand spraying in two or three years. Maybe it’s time to give that technique a whirl again.

War Stories

The modelling hobby loves militaria. Planes, tanks, ships, artillery, it's like the modern day hand down of toy soldiers in the days when war games were played on back lawns. Okay, that's an oversimplification, and we build our chosen thematic material for many different reasons. A love of aviation, memories of service life, tribute to those who have served, a fascination with a time or place... I tend to look on the military equipment I model as elements of history, both the social and political history of the world and the history of technology itself. Also, the subjects we model, if they are true to life and have any accuracy at all, have stories behind them, or real human lives and dangers, not just of glue and paint.

During a recent group build on the FineScale Modeler forums, three aircraft were presented by one builder, including a brief backstory for each – the historical reality of the subject matter. That crystalised the concept for me, that each and every model we build has its story. Every time someone completes a model of the Bismark or Hood, they are retelling the terrible hours in the Davis Strait when those ships duelled. When we put the finishing touches to a favourite aircraft type in the markings of an ace, we are remembering the exploits of that pilot. The same with tanks, whatever markings you settle on, for whatever reason, whether aesthetic or due to historical research beforehand, we are recalling the actions of that vehicle and its crew, valorous, victorious or otherwise.

I was struck by the degree to which the vast range of subject matter presented to modellers today is a catalogue of the ephemeral: the markings this aircraft wore for that six week period, the equipment fit that tank carried during that particular action, the camouflage scheme experimented with on ships during those months of that year... And there is the personal record.

I'm a big fan of the Bf 109 and have collected a great many decal sheets detailing the history of the type in the various theatres of World War II, and while there are markings for victorious aces who survived the war (Galland, Hartmann, etc.) there are many schemes belonging to aircraft that went down and pilots who did not survive. This became very clear when I read through the notes accompanying Eagle Strike sheet #48078, Jagdwaffe over the Sahara, a collection of Bf 109 F-4 decals. Every one of the five aircraft depicted on the sheet was lost (that in itself is not ultimately surprising), and at least three of the pilots died, possibly all five, it was not absolutely clear from the information given. It's this latter that strikes a chord. The lives that were bound up with the machines, invested in the necessity of the moment, the imperatives of the politics of the age, and which went the way of millions.

If one builds a model of the Arizona, one is remembering the dreadful death-toll in her torpedoed hull. The same with the Yamato, as well as the courageous actions that preceded the coming of the end. Tiger tanks are ever-popular, but by 1944 they were not the invincible rolling fortresses they had been, and crews died by the bushel. To build a diorama of vehicles marked for units at the Battle of Kursk, whether German or Russian, is to recall, with hopefully a due sombreness, what is by many criteria the largest and perhaps the most terrible set-piece battle in human history.

So when critics of the hobby point with a certain negativity to its fascination with military subjects, rather than with the branches that build, cars, trucks, trains and airliners, I reply thoughtfully that the hobby celebrates courage and maps the course of technological development, while also serving as a reminder of the past, which is, of course, one of the best ways to escape reliving it.

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!

Accuracy, Out of Inaccuracy

Aurora -- the name brings back rosey-eyed memories of many an afternoon spent with glue and paint as a child, not that I could afford many Auroras. I remember a shop that stocked them in the early 1970s, the square-box edition with those imposing paintings, their movie monsters series in particular. I bought their King Kong and was very impressed by that powerful figure. I’ve often wondered what I could do with that kit with my current techniques.

 

 But the Aurora I’m thinking of is somewhat different. It was said by a reviewer that Aurora’s aircraft were always suspect, and the older the kits the more likely they were to be suspicious as to their accuracy and fit. Aurora’s B-58 Bomber (#375) was tooled in 1958, I managed to find an unmade 1958 example (long box) on eBay, for a reasonable price (some parts had been assembled, several were painted, and they were detached from their sprues). I needed it to mold off some parts to build some SF studio replicas -- TV FX miniatures built in the 60s which used B-58 parts from this kit -- and in that much it will suit its purpose perfectly. But the kit itself is a...disaster!

It’s the wrong shape. Not one single part of it is accurate. Not the proportional sizes, not the contours. The engines are way too fat, the tailplane is all over the map, the wings are the wrong size. There are raised decal guides on the surface... How this model could have remained in production for so long is a total amazement. Revell’s and Monogram’s early offerings may not have been up to scratch by modern standards but they were rather better than this. Italeri’s #1142 is by far the best B-58 in the scale, no wonder it fetches the prices it does on eBay these days: maybe Italeri will take notice of this and reissue the kit again, as they did about five (?) years ago.

 

 Here’s a comparison, the Aurora (top) and Italeri (bottom) engines, the latter being accurate and in fact the larger scale!

 And here are the fuselages and tails, Aurora at the top, then Lindberg and Italeri at the bottom. They seem like three different aircraft.

And on the subject of scale -- the classic Aurora is always reputed to be 1:64th, but the stated scale is ‘5/32nd” (to the foot)’, which goes through the calculator thus: 12” x 1/32nd” = 384/32nds, divided by 5 = 76.8th scale. This is almost the same as Lindberg’s (somewhat better) kit, which compared to the real aircraft scales out at 1/78th, and accounts for why the parts are smaller than Italeri’s (which is a -- more accurate -- 1:72). Unless Aurora tooled a larger B-58 (as they tooled a much smaller one at 1:180th, released these days by Addar), I’m mystified at the general air of confusion surrounding this kit.

 

 Incidentally, Lindberg’s has also been deemed 1:64, which it isn’t. The stated scale is 3/16th”=1’, which calculates out at 1/64th okay, but when you measure the components and compare them to the real aircraft, it’s noticeably the smallest of the three.

Will I ever assemble the Aurora Hustler? No. But I’ll use plenty of castings from those components to build entirely accurate replicas of the science fiction craft which used its parts: therein lies actual accuracy, which, ironically, stems from inaccuracy as its basis!