Tuesday, 5 January 2021
POLAR LIGHTS SPINDRIFT
Taking a break from my revisited Sixteen 12 Eagle posts, which I'll continue later today, here's a few photos of a Polar Lights Spindrift kit. This one I bought completed off eBay very cheaply, with the intention of taking it apart and using bits to complete my old Aurora kit. Alas, another project that is still on the back burner!
I've got that kit. It may not be totally accurate but it does look pretty good.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's pretty reasonable, Kev. The top clear some lets it down by being circular. The Moebius kit is more accurate, but it's too small.
DeleteI had the Aurora kit in the 60s.
ReplyDeleteIt was a poor kit because the roof section didn't fit properly onto the rest of the body. It left a disappointing gap between the front windows and the cowling.
A shame because I really liked the ship's design, but the model looked naff.
Mish.
You can see my old Aurora kit in the bottom photo, Mish. Yeah, Aurora had a few issues. The Flying Sub suffered the same problem with its pull off top. To be honest the worst kit for issues is the UNCLE Piranha kit, made by AMT. I made two and in spite of my efforts they both ended up with the same problems of poor part fitting.
DeleteYeah, Michael and Scoop, I had the Aurora Spindrift too. Now that you mention it, I recall having to make some balsa wood spacers amd paint them gloss black to try and fix the poor fit!
ReplyDeleteI was quite amazed to discover years later that the G logo on the ship and the crew uniforms was actually reused from one of the Derek Flint movies. Maybe the Land of the Giants Art Depertment were rummaging through the spares bin and decided they could save on embroidered patches, which had a knock on effect for the whole production!
That's an interesting fact about the logo, Lewis, I'll have to delve a little deeper into that, cheers.
DeleteI never had any of these SF kits, as I was more into real aircraft and tanks. You could get around the fit problem by simply leaving off the top, and painting the exposed model edges red, like in a cut-away drawing. That also disposes of the clear dome problem.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the kit never fitted quite right it wasn't quite as bad as we're probably making out, Paul. :)
DeleteThe problem with the dome, was it should have been pear shaped, and not circular. I'm not sure why Aurora did that. Maybe it was based on original drawings of the prop Spindrift, or maybe it was a factory production issue.
Very nice
ReplyDelete