Would love to see one in 1/48. That would go a long way towards filling a hole in my RAN FAA collection. [:P]
I didn’t want to suggest the old Frog/Nove/Eastern/Revell etc. Gannet was a bad kit - just one that has long since reached its use-by date. For its time and technology it was undoubtedly reasonable fare just as, in the generation before it, lumps of balsa wood from which to carve your own fuselage were perfectly acceptable.
When raised panel lines were all you got no-one complained 'cos any panel lines were a bonus (even if they weren’t accurate).
I think I’d like to see a 1:48 Gannet from Classic Airframes, or at least their Eastern European manufacturers (who’d be cheaper).
I wonder if Trumpeter will be able to adapt their tooling for the AEW version? With its radome, taller tail and relocated exhausts it might be a difficult.
Michael
I had heard somewhere that Classic airframes was revving up to do a 1/48 Gannet series, but then I didn’t hear anything else about it.
I thought Trumpeter was going to release an AEW Gannet at the same time as their ASW one, I was rather surprized to see that they didn’t, I think they had both types anounced on their web site.
I also think the AEW Gannet would have to be completely different molds at least as far as the fuselage was concerned. The wings and Horizontal stabilizers might be interchangable, but nothing else.
I can’t help feeling a certain ambivalence toward Trumpeter. On the one hand their cutting-edge technology and production techniques have raised the bar in the quality stakes (not in all their products, mind you) and I have to take my hat off to them for their choice of some great subjects, such as the Gannet, Wyvern, German steam loco and especially the 1:350 HMS Hood.
<>On the other hand there’s a distinct lack of ‘depth’ in their attention to detail. The 1:350 Liberty ship, based on the Jeremiah O’Brien is a good example. They obviously visited the ship and the Liberty design is very well documented these days yet, when you got down to the nitty-gritty, at a certain level they just seemd to say “OK, that’s good enough” and went out for a Yum-Cha while production got under way. The list of required corrections to the various kit parts is as long as your arm and there are after-market sets out there which, between them, seem to replace 50% of the kit - and that’s just to represent the JoB itself, not one of the various permutations of the Liberty design.
Comments made in this thread earlier suggest the new Gannet may suffer from the same lack of close attention to the finer detail.
I get the impression that the people who run Trumpeter have decided to go into business and have chosen the field of model kits almost at random. Hire good design people, buy the best CAD software and state-of-the-art injection moulding machinery and that’s all you need! One wonders if the top people have even ever built a model.
I’ll grant 'em one thing though, the best boxes in the business.
Michael
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