My LHS is having a sale and one kit that has caught my eye is a 1/72 Vickers Vernon from the Russian firm Maquette.
I’ve done some looking around on the net and found out its Frog’s old Vickers Vimy WWI Bomber with a new fuselage to make the civil Vernon variation.
Can anyone tell me what to expect from old Frog stuff? I’ve never built their stuff. If you have experience with the old Vimy kit, any insights you might have about it are greatly appreciated.
Like to have some idea of what I’m getting into before puting down the money.
Frog kits are very basic, with little or no cockpit detail. However, that said and done, they are diamonds in the rough, needing only a bit of work to produce a nice model.
Frog were very big during the 50’s - 70’s about the time that Airfix were in their heyday.
The one great thing about Frog and the main reason I seek them out is that they produce many kits that have never been produced again. Just 12 months ago if you wanted to build a Hawker Sea Hawk or Westland Wyvern, they were the only game in town!
The Russian Company Novo re-released Frog kits during the 90’s and more recently Eastern Express have re-released other kits.
Frog kits were, as a rule, very basic, little if any detail, and required all of your model-building skills to turn out a respectable build. As Mike has already mentioned, they produeced dozens of one-of-a-kind kits that haven’t been reproduced. They turn out rather nicely with some careful attention.
Frog kits were generally fairly accurate in outline, but lacking detail. I built a lot of them back in the 70’s & still have a few in my collection. No useable interior detail & exterior was either raised panel lines or, in many cases, no panel lines at all. Still, with a lot of TLC they could be built into pretty nice models.
If you get an old Frog kit the situation will be as above. The trouble comes with the reincarrnations. The more times that the kit has been reissued the worse it tends to be with malformed parts and acers of flash.
i have just finished a New Marquetts Whitley and it was a bitch! Babley made parts bits not molded at all and enough flash to make another kit…
I did end up with a reasonable model though and it is the only Whitley in the club.
Dai
The FROG stuff was actually very good for the time, generally accurate in outline if lacking in detail, and WHAT a range!!! Stuff like Martin Baltimores, Vultee Vengeances, all kinds of the weird and wonderful which are stil almost impossible to get any other way. The problem came when the range fell into the hands of NOVO, etc. The quality really went downhill bigtime. There are still aircraft they produced which are mourned because no one has made them since.
The Vernon kit has an injection molded fuselage, and the old Vimy fuselage thrown in as well for good measure. What the kit is sadly lacking (continuing the fine Frog tradition?) is an interior for that cavernous fuselage. You’ll need to either model it with all curtains drawn, or break out the styrene to get some measure of benches in there.
Yes - I echo all of the above - certainly the Whitley was scratch build with a vengence. I can email you a picture of the Vimy if you wish - it is a lot of work but well worth it - certainly you can say you have built it rather than assembled pieces!