Saturday, January 31, 2009

1/187 German WW2 aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin




Announced at the Chicago Hobby Industry Trade Show in October of 2008.

The re-established Hawk/Lindberg kit company (USA) just issued the German WW2 aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin model in 1/187 scale.

I do not know why the weird scale. But the kit has about 1,000 parts, including 50 aircraft in this scale, and a lighted and detailed hangar deck. Wowsers!

The ship model will be 55 1/4 inches (1403 mm) in length! The wingspan of the Ju-87 will be 2.9 inches in that scale. (not sure that wingspan sounds right?)

planned for late in 2009.
It is a shame that Lindberg did not go the extra mile and release this in 1/144, A missed opportunity I think! ??? :o(

it comes with its own aircraft, or maybe you could replace with 1/200 metal items or 1/160? I think 1/144 would be too large...

http://www.cybermodeler.net/special/images/ihe_haw01.jpg
http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26523
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/events/ihobby_2008.htm

3 comments:

smeg1959 said...

Paul Lindberg has a history of choosing odd scales. When everyone else was focussing on 1/72, he went for 1/64. When Airfix and others first released airliners in 1/144, he predictably halved his "standard" and went for 1/128.

In fact, the long out-of-production Lindberg pairing of a Bf109 (very dodgy outline) and a Bucher Bu133 Jungmeister, both in 1/128, recently sold on evilBay. The seller had listed the kit as 1/144, but was happy to add the amendment regarding the true scale.

It was a shame ... I really wanted a 1/144 Jungmeister! :-(

smeg1959 said...

To be fair, Lindberg wasn't alone in the scale selection stakes. Monogram, Revell and others also did a lot of odd "fit the box" scales. Seemed to be a 1950's and 1960's US phenomenon.

Which reminds me that, a while back, Revell re-released several of their old mouldings to celebrate their 50th anniversary. This included a Convair R3Y2 Tradewind flying boat, which scales out around 1/166. Predictably for a kit of 1956 vintage, it is short on detail with huge rivets (!) and a bit inaccurate, but worth considering for novelty value.

A good review and build can be found at http://ratomodeling.com/wip/tradewind/

bluedonkey99 said...

can understand kits from "way back when" having odd scales, and 2fit the box" criteria.

So is this a reissue? if not, you would have thought htey would have used one of the modern standardised scales?

If it had been 1/144 (or even 1/160 for Railroad dock yard dioramas)it would have sold more? t ould fit in with other peoples existing collections and after market products....

at 1/144 there would be a strong pull, at 1/187 its not going to work and is sufficiently out of scale not to entice me... especially when Anigrand is knocking out products at a great rate of knots!