Al's Kit Corner

By Al Superczynski

Welcome back! As promised last month, here’s something for the aircraft nuts this time around, especially for airliner fans.

ATP at one time reissued a number of the old Kadar kits which were also released by Lincoln, and again by International Modeling in the 1970’s – the Kadar and Lincoln issues included decals for Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) but my memory fails me on the markings included in the IM kit. Among them was the Fokker F-27, available in either Hughes Air West or Piedmont markings. My copy includes the former.

ATP included a new instruction sheet that gave painting guidelines and outlined the changes required to convert the kit to a Fairchild F-27A which is the license-built version actually used by that airline. Curiously, the oversized windows aren’t mentioned as they are in ATP’s instructions for the Piedmont decals.

These unusual little kits were obviously scaled-down copies of the Airfix 1/72 scale kit, the parts breakdown and surface detail being virtually identical. Even the moving features (landing gear, control surfaces, and props) were faithfully copied from the Airfix tooling.

Every manufacturer that sold this kit advertised it as 1/144 scale which of course it would be had it been an exact half-size copy of the Airfix kit. Unfortunately the Airfix kit’s fuselage is ~12.5 inches long, while the smaller model’s is 7 inches long making it actually ~1/134 scale. The excellent Doyusha kit currently available, BTW, is exactly half the size of the Airfix kit.

My example of this kit has well-molded parts with little flash and typically excellent ATP decals. It originally retailed for $2.98 and should still be relatively easy to find for around $10 or so in one of the various versions. Given that it was based on the still very good Airfix kit it was a very credible offering for its era.

Something for the treadheads next month. Till then, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to, and the critics will flame you every time."