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New Apollo kits


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The manufacturers are doing it on the cheap. There are plenty of 50th anniversary models, but they're just re-releases of old kits, possibly with new decals and paint schemes. This kind of makes sense from an anniversary marketing point of view -- build the same kit you/they did 50 years ago -- but given the limitations of every kit that's been released since the 60s, it's not very satisfying for those of us who would like an accurate model without resorting to major surgery and custom 3D printing.

 

Unfortunately, space is a niche market, or so the kitmakers say, so the odds against new toolings are pretty high. Of course, if they'd done it right the first time, we wouldn't have the problem, but they didn't, and they haven't revised the kits over the years -- also on the grounds of cost -- so we're stuck with what is available. Shame, that.

 

 

Edited by Tarkas
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Revell have re-popped all their Apollo kits in new boxes as you have probably noticed from my reviews of late.  Apart from the awesome Lego kit linked above though, I've not seen or heard of anything new in terms of tooling, and TBH I'd have thought if there were anything they'd be daft to not release it in time for the anniversary, which is just a few days distant on the 20th of this month.  I just checked the date with Alexa and she's quite verbose on the matter :)

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To give Airfix their due, when they re-released their 1/144 Saturn Ib and Saturn V in 2009. they took the opportunity to correct the errors in the Lunar Module adaptor section and the Command Service Module. So, the latest Saturn V release is the updated and corrected version of the Saturn V.

 

Their Lunar Module isn't bad and can be corrected to make it look more like the actual thing.

 

About ten years ago, Dragon released a "new tool" Lunar Module. Whilst the mouldings are better quality, it is still not accurate and I think the Airfix LM is still a better starting point for an accurate 1/72 LM.

 

 

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11 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

About ten years ago, Dragon released a "new tool" Lunar Module. Whilst the mouldings are better quality

If that's the 1:48 kit, it's now available under the Revell banner, and I gave it a once-over here. :)

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On 19/07/2019 at 11:05, Mike said:

If that's the 1:48 kit, it's now available under the Revell banner, and I gave it a once-over here. :)

It was the 1/72 kits I was thinking of.  The CSM is pretty good all round.

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On 7/19/2019 at 4:24 PM, Mike Esposito said:

Specifically, I was looking for the Dragon 1/72 CSM and LM kits. They are horribly priced in Ebay.

Revell has something similar in 1/96: https://www.revell.de/en/products/modelmaking/space-scifi/50th-anniversary-moon-landing/apollo-11-columbia-eagle.html 

And its intruction sheet: https://stage.revell.de/fileadmin/import/images/bau/03700_%23BAU_Apollo_Columbia_Eagle.pdf

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On 03/08/2019 at 09:15, Tomppa B said:

Note that this model is very, very inaccurate for a genuine Apollo Command/Service Module. The detail on the Service Module in particular is more akin to that on the original Block I design, which was never used for any manned flights. The Lunar Module looks like it is missing the support struts for the downward pointing RCS thrusters (like the Airfix kit).

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