Kallisti

Oh what a great idea! The car also appeared in a movie in 1959 with Debbie Reynolds and Glen Ford, It started with a kiss. There is a dedicated website to this Batmobile that give you all sort of pics and details: http://1966batmobile.com/

A long time ago I picked up this kit and its been in my stash for years So finally at the end of 2022 I got it out of the stash and built it!!! The most complex part of the build was the paint job and the red stripe decaling. The black paint is in fact Alclad gloss black base primer with a coat of Klear over the top. This was a better finish than anything else I could come up with! Getting the red stripe decals to conform was an exercise in patience and LOTS of Micro Sol!! But they went down eventually and the end result is very good I reckon I had forgotten to post this before, even though I'd mentioned in my yearbook thread

The latest in Round 2/MPC's ongoing Space:1999 kit series is the smaller scale Laboratory Eagle as a follow up to the 22" kit they release 3 years ago which you can see my build of here: This is the 1:72 scale version, although if you've read enough of my posts about the Eagles, you'll know that the scale is just a nominal value as the original 44" was NOT 1:24 scale even though they used the pilot figures from the 1:24 scale Gemini kit. The figures are too big to fit through the various doors and the TV people were not interesting in accurate scale representation but just on size, so they should really be called the 44", 22" and 12". However, modellers are obsessed with scale so we get the 22" - nominally 1:48 - downscaled to 1:72 and end up with a 14" long Eagle rather than a 12". I really don't care to be honest even though it might sound from the above that I do Here is the box: This is not a big box, 9" wide, 12.5" long and 3.75" deep but it contains a LOT of plastic! As usual for Round 2 they use the sides of the lower box for the paint and decal guide and a large instruction sheet There is, naturally, a lot of commonality with the 22" kit but the major changes are No spring loaded legs - you get a choice of landed or flying posed feet: The spine is not split into two halves legth-wise and you don't need to assemble it strut by strutm it comes and two pieces, upper and lower The walkway cages are partially joined together unlike the 22" where you need to assemble the angled sides Apart from these major changes, the construction is very similar to the 22" so lets get cracking! The initial assembly is lots of subassemblies that will eventually be assembled - here for example are the 4 leg pods and the command module, all of which build up almost exactly the same as in the 22" the only difference being no transparencies for the cockpit windows The leg pods are handed, so you can see my notation on the struts to identify their location for later - hopefully I'll remember NOT to paint over them later! Assembling the legs themsleves is tricky as the sprue gates for the foot part are really complicated and hard to detach - I ended up using a razor saw! The main walkways were assembled and the joints needed some filler to smooth them out, this is exactly the same as the 22" Also the engine combustion bottles later neded a bit of filling at the sprue gate attachment points as the sprue cutters I'd used caused some stressing of the plastic on the part itself. Spine went together well - there is a little bit of fettling required for some of the angled joints as there is a tiny fillet of plastic that needs removing from some of the more acute angled joints. Various other bits, filling and sanding also required here Laboratory pod went together well, although the triangular protrusions were a tight fit to get onto the main body if you follow the assembly instruction sequence. It all fits well without the need for any filler Lots of bits for the booster pack that will eventually site on the spine. The joins of the various pieces do need some sanding and that is not easy with the amount of surface detail present and finally from this update, some primer went on last night so when this is cured, I'll be inspecting the various joints for potential tidy up...

Mine arrived on Tuesday and yesterday I finished the Joe 90 car... hmmmm I wonder what to build next... I'm sure Mike Reader will produce a set, but you are then looking at at least the cost of the kit again and probably more. Not worth it.

Got this on order from the USA since every UK retailer is saying Mid-Feb before its available. Will be interesting to compare it to the 22" kit

So paint has gone on and here are the results - the green is a mix of Tamiya XF-5 and about 10% XF-8 to give it a blue tinge Silver is Mr Metal Color Aluminum. The green has some variation but I will even that up later with a coat of Klear and matt varnish. I'm hoping the window masking holds up well! Some other bits that will be attached later The engine has been sprayed with Alclad Aluminium. Finally the lat major piece of work, the front axles ready for Alclad top coat Being able to give this a matt varnish without messing up the aluminium will be a bit of a challenge I think!

Nice to see a pic with the inside of the fuselage panel with the first aid kit visible...

The build has been progressing but this is not an easy kit! Bad moulding, poor fit, sink marks, the usual problems with old kits. One of the major issues is the front wheels. The axles are composed of a complex structure but the joint surfaces are really bad This next pic shows what I mean, the top one is assembled OOB and you can see the ill fitting joint. The lower one is after the first round of sanding... and then this final one is after filling, more sanding and attaching the extra details. The legs are supposed to be foldable, but as far as I can see this won't work. I tried a test fit of the legs onto the body and founda major problem - to fit it as described in the instructions and the body does not sit level The reason being their is this tall pillar that the axle is supposed to attach to via a screw to provide a 'steering' mechanism. Well since this is not going to be a toy, I don't need steering so this has been removed as it will be glued when attached. The legs are also too legs so they will get glued at the correct angles when the wheels are on and the paint is done. In other news, the cockpit and engine have had some work You can see on the engine, the awful joint line, this needed a LOT of sanding and filling, and the trickiest bits where around the ribbing... but it eventually got done and then primed with Alclad gloss black ready for a metallic finish The figures for Joe and Mac are basic but at least Mac has his glasses! It all painted up pretty well, the faces are not works of art though Since this pic was taken, the steering wheel and arms have been repositioned to fit better. The upper body has had more work and the transparencies glued in place. These did not fit well so a lot of Glue n Glaze was used to fill gaps and make sure they are firmly attached. What you can also see here at the front behind the headlights which have had filler applied to smooth the joint, is the place where brackets were located to support the sprint loaded missiles which have been removed. You can also see in the middle the lever merchanism that is used to release the spring loaded wings and also raise the back legs. I am putting this in even if its is a bit toy-like... Since these pics were taken, the two halves have been joined which needed an enormous sanding job to clean up the joint. The cockpit has been inserted and the windows masked in preparation for priming. I've also managed to get a nice colour mix for the body which is a bluey green colour as far as I can tell from screenshots of the original model, so I mixed up some Tamiya XF-5 with about 20% XF-8 blue which gives what to my eye looks to be a good colour. I'll probably be wrong and have to correct it later, thats what usually happens

Nooo, don't be put off!!! I will not allow it!!! GET ON WITH IT!!!

I've had this kit in the stash for many many years and every so often I take it out, look at it, shake my head and put it back. This time I nodded my head... Its not a complex kit but it does come with the usual toy-like features such as spring loaded missiles which I will of course be leaving off. The instructions are in Japanese of course but an extra page has been included with English translations of SOME of the text Progress so far has been pretty much sanding mould lines and flash! More to come!

Wow how did I miss this first time round? Impressive bit of reconstruction but I was shocked that they original builder used epoxy resin rather than solder the spine, I mean you know how heavy these things are!!! Lovely job!

The original Avatar left me cold... very pretty but story? I can't see these new batch being any different and to be honest I didn't knwo why people were so impressed with the graphics of the first one - at the time I was playing Lord of the Rings Online and the graphics in that (at that time) were almost as good AND you could interact with the landscape and explore, I much preferred it to being bored by a tedious story Then along came the Planet of the Apes movies which essentially told a variation on the same story, along with the various Jurassic Park rehashes...

I'll be happy to join this one too - many of my builds are flights of fancy

Thanks for all the kind comments

I did a build of an 81 Sqn Spitfire IX a few years back - my Father was an electrician with the Sqn during that period: