10 worst model kits of all time

I had a lot of fun with those and their Fw 190D. I practised a lot of weathering techniques on the 190.

Usually accessed by a large trap door inserted into the fuselage.

Too bad as it was probably very nice. I did enjoy building their F8U in

1/48th. It seemed at the time ('70s) to be the most accurate Crusader available. Aurora's seemed to have quite a 'grin' in the engine intake.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

i still have fun with the lindbergs. i bash and hack into whatever. wanna see the first 15 versuchs ar234's? no need to repaint those 112's, make a dozen.

I'd forgotten that that was the first 1/72 scale model of the FW-190D IIRC. They were also the first with a 1/72 scale Ar-234. Somebody had been reading Luftwaffe modeler's wish lists obviously.

Sometimes the whole fuselage separated, and you could remove the engine.

It was okay; you could open a trapdoor on top of the body and look at the engines. ;-)

Okay, finally get a chance to settle this...was it the Aurora or Lindberg Crusader that had the rubber-band powered working ejection seat? The Lindberg F-104 had the original downward ejection seat on it, didn't it?

Pat

Looky here:

say they've got some in stock Here's details of the kit: never thought of this before...how exactly does the pilot get into the X-3? From underneath it?

Pat

LURKER ALERT!

Took me a minute to find it, but the x-3 was entered from below

Lindberg, as did their Hunter (I popped the one from the latter in 6th Grade and the teacher confiscated the seat. Bum!) The Aurora one had a separating tail and engine as well as retractable landing gear.

Cookie Sewell

I seem to remember reading somewhere that's how it was done, but wasn't sure. When they realized it wasn't even going to crack Mach 1 in level flight, much less get anywhere near the Mach 2 design speed, they started trying to figure out ways to give in more "umph" in the thrust department. Among the ideas (which would make some interesting conversion projects for a model X-3) was to fair over the engine air intakes and stick twin XLR-11 quadruple-chambered rocket engines (as were used on the X-1 and early X-15 flights) in where the jets were, then air-drop it off of either a C-74 or B-60. Earlier in the program, the concepts for propulsion had included mixed rocket-jet approaches, twin turbojets plus wingtip mounted 20" diameter ramjets, or turning either part or all of of the wing into a lenticular ramjet (basically the wing is hollow and its interior becomes a wide flat ramjet combustion chamber; this idea had been experimented with on the Hermes II V-2 rocket test vehicle:

I bought that F-19 kit when it first came out, but it was a time that I wasn't building anything. By the time I was going to get around to it, everyone knew the thing was fantasy...so I gave it to a kid, I think. Then much later it developed some interest on ebay. Wonder if that kid ever built it....

--- Stephen

on 9/13/2007 5:41 PM Stephen Tontoni said the following:

He sold it on eBay. :-)

That kit was a lot of fun to do for that project which was in Fine Scale Modeler some time ago. I chose to make a solid canopy by filling the kit one with resin. I shaped it to be more aerodynamic as I did with the tail, as well as adding a skeg beneath the tail. Can't see in the picture, but rather than the side mounted intakes for the engines, I scratchbuilt and cast NACA air ducts over the top. The exhaust is not vented out the side either; since all the landing gear/wheel wells were deleted on the hydro version, I simply ducted all the exhaust straight out the back. But, I misplaced the race numbers which would have disqualified it. It was a very fun project, as I said before.

My first entry that was very close to completion was a DH Hornet with contra-rotating 5 bladed props driven by Griffon engines. Canopy was deleted, and it was piloted from the prone position. I had a buddy of mine vac a nose in clear that I grafted on. The thing looked fast, but I had a last minute disaster and the model was never completed. Oh well!

--- Stephen

That would look really sharp! Try these things on for size:

the Stormer, Snorter, and Lancer: here's the plans for the models: Pat

PM Ta 154. Buried in the dark recesses of my mind. Frank resurrects those memories and I just blew dinner into the trashcan. The kit led me to do a three page "review" of the kit for the group over ten years ago.

Add to it:

Smer 1/48 MiG 17. MPM 1/72 George.

I think I'm gonna be sick again...

Art

Cookie answered the F8U question so I'll try the F-104. I didn't have a Lindberg 104 (IIRC, it was an XF-104, with the J65 engine and short fuselage) but I did have a Hawk F-104A that had the underside hatch. Mine was a '70s issue kit that had eliminated some of the parts for pumping the pilot figure out the bottom but it was obvious to those of us who had seen the older issues built.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Westinghouse's engines seem to have always promised more than they could deliver. The X-3 was carrying J34s. Then there is the question about the Area Rule effect. Had better engines been available would it have helped?

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

When designed in its final form it was to be powered by two Westinghouse J-46-WE-1, each generating in excess of 4,200 lb thrust. But those engines never panned out, so it ended up with the two J-34s instead. With afterburner, the J-46 would have offered 6,400 lb thrust vs. the J-34's 4,850 lb thrust under afterburner. I don't know if that would have gotten it to Mach 2 (the aircraft really needed to be area-ruled for high speed flight), but at least it would have gotten it over Mach 1, and cut down on the three mile long takeoff run by reducing the time it took to hit the 260 mph liftoff speed. The J-46 driven model would have been larger in overall fuselage size though, so that might have cut into the advantages of the increased thrust as far as top speed went.

Pat

Jeeze, I dug out my copy of Green's "Warplanes Of The Third Reich" and started to compare my model of it to the drawings in the book last night, and it's not that bad...it's not up to say ROG or Hasegawa standards by any means, but I've built far worse kits than that from "garage" manufacturers over the years. You latch onto that MPM Me-262 Mistel kit and the TA-154 is going to look like a dream to build by comparison. PM is a very small manufacturer, and its releases need to be judged by the standards of other very small model manufacturing firms, not mainstream ones. Sure it's going to take some work, and sure it's got some problems as far as detail goes...but latch onto a Pegasus Model's BV-155 and tell me how much fun you have making _that_ look even vaguely presentable.

Pat

Oh yes, that's very fun stuff. I found a picture I had taken of my Israeli Bearcat that was modified for the Schneider '49 race. I don't even recall where I found that spinner for it, but it looks pretty cool. Also enlarged the leading edge intakes, streamlined the canopy, etc etc etc...

Talk to you later!

(can't find a picture of that darned DH Hornet... I wrote an article on the build for internet modeler but am too lazy to go looking for it.. anyone really good with searches?)

--- Stephen Tontoni

Just remembered another to add to the list.... Blue Max Fokker DR.I in

1/48 scale.

Although expensive, and supposedly state of the art at the time, the plastic looked more like Ivory soap. Somehow you were supposed to get a Fokker shaped thing out of that. Also white metal details that were apparently lovingly cast, packaged, then walked on by the Manchester United football club.

This was one I bought sight unseen (hey, it's expensive, it's good right?) and immediately put it on ebay. I'll go to hell for that ..among other transgressions. (although I did take lots of pictures of the kit itself).

---- Stephen

Oh, that does look sharp; has a touch of a Japanese "Rex" seaplane fighter about it, doesn't it? It'd be fun to work out the aerodynamics of the wing tip float pylons. Now you've got me tempted to do some sort of a asymmetrical Blohm and Voss one. :-D

Pat