IMAI Eagle Transporter 1/100 scale.

[Whofan]

IMAI Eagle Transporter 1/100 scale.

 

This is a fairly old small scale kit of the Space 1999 Eagle Transporter.

 

Box art here;

 

 

I found it on a stand selling various Sci Fi items (mostly fairly cheap) at a Comic Con in Worcester last September. The guy selling it wanted £30 for it, I beat him down to £25. I appear to have had a bargain, as I looked on ebay the other day and they seem to be going for £35 upwards.

 

Anyway, this was never going to go on ebay, it was going to be a hopefully fairly quick and easy build.

 

And so it was. If I told you I had any problems putting it together I'd be lying. 

 

This left decals, painting and weathering.

 

Decals? Old and showed it. I didn't use some of them as they showed clear signs of failure on the backing sheet. Those I did use confirmed their poor status, when three of the 10 I put on failed, either breaking up on contact with plastic or curling around themselves into unusable balls of decal. Not to worry, thought I, I'm not going for absolute replication here, a cheap and cheerful quick build in between some more effort needing aeroplanes.

 

Painting? Given the instructions were in Japanese, and I couldn't find a translation on t'internet, I did the minimum possible and only painted the white rocket motor bells dark iron on the insides, flat aluminium on the outside with a hint of heat blueing from clear blue and then a thinnish coal of smoke over the aluminium and blue. All paint being Tamiya. I didn't paint the sides of the cargo container with red stripes as they weren't on the box art.

 

You may ask why did you paint the rocket exhaust bells? Because IMAI made them in white plastic! I was fairly sure these would never have stayed white in real life.

 

No weathering, as there's no weather on the moon! I did contemplate using a grey weathering powder to brush up over the feet, but gave it up after a trial run on some waste plastic.

Here are some photos of this, my second completed build this year.

 

 

showing the rubber tyres on the wheels;

 

 

The odd way the cabin and engine (as you'll see) clip on to the main body of the kit using a lug and clip so no glue. 

 

 

This feature, together with the wheels on the cargo container enabling the kit to be wheeled around, lend weight to the thought that this is a kit designed more to be a playable toy than a replica.

 

Anyway, here presented for your delectation, thanks for looking.

[Yg Models]

i like its modular design that you could extend cargos.

[Whofan]

4 hours ago, Yg Models said:

i like its modular design that you could extend cargos.

I’m pretty sure that there were some different cargo pods in different boxings, not just in this IMAI kit, but in other manufacturers’ kits of the Eagle Transporter.

[Pete in Lincs]

Very nice. I've seen the box, but never seen the built kit. 

[Whofan]

2 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Very nice. I've seen the box, but never seen the built kit. 

I did a search of Britmodeller and it doesn’t look as if anyone has done a build of this one before, either.