Tabla de contenidos para November/December 2024 en FineScale Modeler

Have you ever dreamt of building the colossal Bandai HGUC 1/144 scale RX-78GP03 Gundam “Dendrobium” but felt intimidated by its sheer size? Well, fret no more, because I have you covered. Released in 2002, many consider the Dendrobium to be the most expensive Bandai High Grade kit to date, and it is the second largest kit, beat only by the HGUC NZ-999 Neo Zeong, making it a “holy grail” for many modelers. How big is big? When finished, the Dendrobium stands 13¾ inches tall with a 17¼-inch by 39-inch footprint! Inside the enormous box are 46 parts trees housed in two separate boxes (helpfully labeled Container A and Container B) with lists of the runners within. Not a quick build, the key to success is to break up this huge…

Sometimes, I get tired of all the aftermarket hoopla. Not only the expense of photoetched metal (PE) and resin sets, but working with them becomes almost a mindnumbing tedium. To get past that, once in a while I take a break and see what I can do without the aftermarket, see what I can to with what is in the box and a little homespun help. The world of 1/72 scale armor has exploded in the last couple of decades with well-detailed and molded kits becoming widely available. The fidelity to scale in some of these kits must be seen to be believed and some even include PE. Looking for something simple, I grabbed Italeri’s 1/72 scale Autoblinda AB-41. The parts are clean and delicately detailed. While several hatches are…

If you are like me and many of the modelers I know who have been building for decades, you have a penchant for purchasing kits assuming you will eventually build them. Fast forward a few years (or decades), and those same kits languish at the bottom of your stash, often because a new, modern tooling of the same subject has been released in the meantime. Of course, said new “wunderkit” must be purchased. So, what of that old kit that you had such good intentions of building? Is it irredeemable? Should it be consigned to the scrap heap? What if there was something that could actually be done with it? With that dilemma in mind, I happened upon an idea that could save that old kit from nothing short of…

The new Academy Panzer I Ausf B and Motorcycle joins the company’s other German World War II tank kits paired with a Zundapp motorcycle and sidecar. This match can seem a little strange because the Zundapp was not available during the early part of the war when the Panzer I was used. However, they are two fine kits if taken separately. Assembly starts with the Zundapp motorcycle and sidecar. I found building the wheels and forks challenging. Make sure to pay attention to the callouts for locating the wheels in relation to the fenders. The front fender supports require delicate gluing as they just butt up to the bottom edge of the fender. The rest of the motorcycle goes together well, although I kept the sidecar and saddlebags separate to…

Living in Poland, we have seen increased air traffic over our heads of military transports carrying equipment to Ukraine to support that country’s defense since the Russian invasion in February 2022. Seeing them inspired me to build one of these aircraft, which led me to the Italeri 1/72 scale C-27J Spartan (No. 1402). This Italian-built, twin turboprop entered Italian air force service in 2006 and is operated by 17 other countries including the United States where Spartans are active in the Coast Guard and Army Special Operations Command. In addition to adding some aftermarket detail to the kit, I wanted to use the large airframe — the finished model is 12 inches long with a more than 15 inch wingspan — to try some different finishing techniques to model an…

On June 15, 2024, modelers from across the upper Midwest traveled to McHenry, Illinois, for the Northern Illinois Model Contest or NIMCON 12. Hosted by the IPMS/Lakes Region Scale Modelers, the show was in a new venue, McHenry VFW Post 1600, and featured 292 models. Here’s a selection for your viewing pleasure!…

Every now and then I get the itch to try different ways to make an otherwise straightforward model stand out. Sometimes I will add scratchbuilt or 3D-printed parts. Other times, I have installed lights or motors to animate a model. I have used small electric motors to spin the propellers on single-engine airplanes before, but I had never done that on a model with more than one powerplant. I wanted to give it a spin, and I thought Minicraft’s 1/144 scale G4M Betty was the perfect test subject. The parts count is relatively low, and the model is easy to assemble. Space is always a concern when it comes to adding motors. Luckily, the kit’s engine nacelles are hollow and leave plenty of room for small motors I found on…

To my knowledge, the all-new ICM 1/48 scale Martin B-26B Marauder plastic model kit is the fourth Marauder in 1/48 scale, after Aurora, AMT, and Monogram. The sturdy box contains 348 plastic parts; a 24-page instruction book with ICM paint references; and beautifully printed decals for three aircraft, one olive drab over neutral gray and two in natural metal, all three sporting invasion stripes. The parts show no flash and minor mold seams. Surface detail is limited to narrow panel lines and Dzus-fasteners. The are no photo-etched metal details, but you won’t miss them because the plastic parts are so fine. My kit’s canopies were crystal clear. The soft, flexible plastic means antennas and gun barrels bend rather than break if accidentally tweaked during construction. Mold lines were located near…

In one of my first “Classic Kits” columns in Scale Auto magazine, I featured Tamiya’s Mercedes-Benz 500 SEC kit. The kit was most notable for being the company’s first, fully detailed kit in 1/24 scale, meaning complete under-hood detail with a stand-alone engine assembly and full front and rear suspension assemblies. Prior to that release, Tamiya concentrated on curbside and motorized Japanese domestic market (JDM) products. Tamiya’s 500 SEC kit was very well received in the growing, early 1980s, adult-facing, model-kit market, and several other full-detail kits soon emerged from the Tamiya development team, including the Ford Sierra XR-4i. In European and overseas markets, the Sierra was Ford’s midsize offering. Replacing the Ford Cortina and Taunus nameplates, the Sierra reflected Ford’s emerging emphasis on aerodynamics. Like the 1983 Thunderbird stateside,…

War stories often feature near misses or escapes from death that seem all-too miraculous. When I built an ICM 1/35 scale Marder I on an FCM 36, officially the 7.5cm PaK40(Sf) auf Geschützwagen FCM(f), I decided to represent just such a scene. Part of the impetus for this was the kit itself. It is well detailed, but I was disappointed that the gun is in one fixed position, and the fighting compartment doors are molded closed. These limited the kit’s diorama or display options, but it could easily represent a selfpropelled gun abandoned by its crew. From there, the diorama developed to include British troops and their truck as well as a “lucky” German soldier whose war may be over but who narrowly escaped death thanks to his helmet. The…

WonderFest 2024 broke another record on June 1 and 2, 2024. The contest room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, was bursting at the seams with 1,118 models of spaceships and sci-fi vehicles, fantasy and horror figures, and mechs.…

“Race cars have always captivated me,” Torben Rothgeb says of his favorite scale modeling subject. “I love the different paint schemes with bright colors and graphics.” Is it any wonder? Growing up within a two-hour drive of the Indianapolis Speedway and attending his first Indianapolis 500 at 14, the roar of engines and the smell of gas and burnt rubber made an indelible mark. But while CART can be fun, it was NASCAR that captured Torben’s everlasting attention. The scale-modeling bug bit Torben in 1981 after completing his first kit, a Monogram 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle. Cars were obviously a passion, and his older brother was already building models, so it was natural he’d give it a try, too. But mix that with watching races at places like Indy, Watkins Glen,…

Simple and to the point: The completely newly tooled AMT 1/25 scale 2021 Dodge Charger Pursuit police car plastic model kit is, in my humble opinion, the best-engineered kit from AMT to date. I had the pleasure of building the R/T version a year ago, so I had an idea of how much fun this one was going to be. The kit offers 160 nicely molded parts. No need for much cleanup. The first three steps have you build the Hemi engine, consisting of 19 parts. I assembled the engine halves, heads, and front of the engine and painted them as a unit. The rest of the parts were painted separately and then attached to complete a fine-looking powerplant. You’ll attach the air filter later in the build, so don’t…