The parts for the 1/288 Nexus model were received from the “printer,” cleaned up, modified a tad, and shipped on. Now it’s up to the molder/caster. Photos of the actual master parts below… note that some parts will need to be duplicated several times per kit. Not shown here is the display stand.
The 1/144 scale “XAB-1 Atomic Bomber” model that I mastered for Fantastic Plastic is now available:
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/ConvairXAB-1CatalogPage.htm
This model was created in CAD, so there’s none of that horrible “hey, this ain’t symmetrical” you get with so many resin models. It’s based on the Hawk model, originally released in 1959 at 1/188 scale… but now done in larger 1/144 scale. It’s a substantial model when assembled.
Comes with landing gear and separate parasite fighters.
Since I moved to Utah, I’ve found a total of three good hobby shops within drivable range. (For the purposes of this discussion, a “hobby shop” is defined as a store with a lot of plastic model kits, but not a hugenormous chain store like “Michaels” and “Hobby Lobby.”) One in Logan, one in Riverdale, one in Sandy.
The Logan hobby shop closed up about a month ago.
The Riverdale shop had its last day today.
The Sandy shop is still there, but I always seem to overhear people talking about it evaporating as well.
I hear this sort of thing is not uncommon. Partially this is due to the economy being sucko. Partially it’s due to kids not being as interested in building models as they are in playing Xbox (get off my lawn!). Partially its due to the Internet. And a lot of it is due to the hobby just being damned expensive.
Compared to the kits that were available when I was a kid, thirty fricken’ years ago, the current crop of kits are technologically advanced, extremely detailed and fabulously well engineered. They are also extremely expensive. Back In The Day, I could buy a decent model kit of an F-14, say, for three to five bucks. Today’s F-14 kit would easily run nearly ten times as much. A check on Squadron.com shows prices for a 1/72 F-14 model running from $18 to more than fifty damned dollars, with most about $30.
Now, I know there’s this thing called “inflation,” but it doesn’t even come close to explaining the price increase. Using this inflation calculator, three bucks in 1980 money works out to $7.92 in today’s money.
There is another source of trouble here: lawyers. Behold one particular license agreement: license.txt There was a time when a model kit company that wanted to make a model of an aircraft would ask the designing company about it, and the company would dump drawings on them to make sure they did it right. Now the companies have to jump through a whole lot of expensive legal hoops. And what’s the result? The same in scale aerospace as real aerospace: American companies are fading away, while the Chinese and Russians are going full speed ahead. It should thus come as no surprise that the manufacturer of the only 1/144 scale Boeing 787 that I’m aware of is not Monogram, or Testors, or Revell, or any other American model company… it’s Zvezda Models from Russia.
So, what do we have here. We have a model & toy culture that is seriously depleted as far as affordable replicas of actual aircraft. We have a space program that’s been dull as dishwater for decades, and has just had what remained of its harbles lopped off. We have more lawyers than engineers being produced. We have exceedingly few references to aerospace in popular music, and those that we do get (“Rocketman,” “Silent Satellite,” “Major Tom,” etc.) are all friggen’ depressing. We have a vast array of aerospace companies being merged into a very small number of monolithic, risk-averse megacorps.
It’s not just a matter of how bad things are now… but also the cultural shifts indicated by that lack of aerospace toys and models for kids means that fewer kids will be inspired to become aerospace engineers and the like. Anybody here really going to be surprised if America ceases to be relevant in the field of aerospace within the next generation?
Back in the day, NASA didn’t just dream large with large launch vehicles… they dreamed large with large models of launch vehicles. For example, here’s a detailed 1/10 scale model of the Saturn C-1 with launch stand, circa 1960. Note that it’s a cutaway model showing innards. I hope that this model, which clearly was the product of a great deal of skill, talent, effort and money, managed to survive somewhere… but I wouldn’t bet on that.
I recieved the 3-D “prints” of the Nexus model today. Holy crap… it’s huge! it’ll be an easy model, since the parts shoudl be relatively few… but it is truly hugenormous. Chances are now good that a line of 1/288 launchers will follow… Saturn Ib, Saturn V, others.
Also now in works is the CAD model for the 1/72 scale “Space: Above and Beyond” Hammerhead fighter. This one will be a hybrid of CAD/stereolithography and a lot of good old fashioned stratchbuilding. The CAD part will assure that the outlines are right and symetrical, the hand sculpting will get the contours far more efficiently than trying to hammer it out on the computer.
Numerous sources have mentioned “Prüfstand XII” (“Test Stand 12,” a code-name) and shown the same relatively unenlightening illustrations of it over the years. The idea behind it was this: at the same time production of the V-2 rocket was ramping up in wartime Germany, the western allies were overrunning V-2 launch bases. So the Germans had a missile, but nowhere to launch it from. The idea was raised about putting V-2’s in cannisters and towing them behind U-Boats; this resulted in the first serious design effort for a sea launched ballistic missile. The submarines available to the Germans at the time were far too small to permit carrying V-2s internally, and given the alcohol fuel and cryogenic liquid oxygen oxidizer, it would have been insanely unsafe to do so. So towed cannisters would allow the subs to transport V-2s in relative safety across the ocean.
The submarines would be stripped of armament; towing the cannisters they’d be essentially sitting ducks anyway. This would permit the installation of more powerful engines. A total of five cannisters could be towed at a time. They’d be towed in the horizontal attitude; once they arrived at the launching site, 500 or so miles from the supply base (indicating that the targets for the V-2 remain in Britain), crews would be transferred aboard and then… the subs would abandon them and return home. The cannisters raised to vertical. Before launch the noses of the cannisters would project above the water; bow doors would open. The V-2s would be launched from them much like any other silo-launched missile, with ducts along the sides to the silo to carry the exhaust away from the fragile missile. The cannister would button up again and resubmerge. Four or five days later the sub would return with another five cannisters and would pick up the first five for return and refurb.
A great deal of the plan seems to have been incredibly optimistic, of course.
I recently stumbled across a post-war writeup of the concept by several of the Germans who worked on it. Included were a number of remarkable drawings and diagrams, finally showing the thing in good detail. The same basic concept was pitched to the US Navy in 1955 for use with Jupiter IRBMs, with no success.
I’ve numerous more diagrams of this. I think it’d make a good APR article… and it’d make a spiffy cutaway display model. If anyone would be interested in contracting me to build them such a model… just let me know.
Now that the X-37 is back in the news, here are some photos of a large display model of it. These shots were taken at Marshall Space Flight Center back in 2005.
Wow. Five years ago. The pace of aerospace development is just blistering.
And here are three pics of a similar model on display at the Hunstville airport, from the same expedition.
A followup to this. A visit to the local thrift-dump scored three crappy old cookers. Of the three, one had a cord that fit the vac former (and another one that might, after a visit with Mr. Dremel Tool). With some trepidation, it was installed, plugged in and turned on. While it smelled of burning shoggoths, the heating element *did* warm to a nice hot orange glow, the 15-year-old sheet of plastic sagged as badly as my hopes and dreams, and the shopvac provided adequate suction to make passable copies of the two empty cans of cat food that happened to be near at hand. Woo! The power cord itself got disturbingly warm, however.
So, now I will be able to make some vac-formed items. The long-dreamed-of, long despised for being incredibly expensive 1/288 scale “Archangel Michael” seems like a possible prospect.
Sometime around 1994 I bought a vacuum-forming machine, the “Hobby Vac System 2.” It worked well, but as time went by my need for it faded, and it got stuffed out of sight. Recently I decided to haul it out of mothballs, as I’ve a few projects that would benefit from vacuum forming. It’s dusty as hell, but seems to be in good shape. But there’s one problem: the power cord. I can’t find the damn thing. Last time I can defintely recall seeing it was a dozen years and two moves ago.
So I packed it up and took it to the local electrician/appliance store, to see what they can tell me… which was “not much” and “good luck.” A search for “Hobby Vac System 2” turns up precisely zip. The plug seems to be a standard sort of appliance plug, perhaps from some sort of grill or cooker or something. It had, as memory serves, a single long central prong, plus the two side sockets as would fit the socket in the photos below. Does this look familiar to anyone? Anyone know where I might be able to procure a replacement?
Ready to hit the mail to the caster. See here for earlier details, and here’s the Fantastic Plastic catalog page for it.
