|
|
Ah, the sixties... the future never looked better.
Pointy tail fins! Shiny bubble domes! Scientifically inexplicable lighting effects! The Spindrift from "Land of the Giants" had all this, and an absurdly garish color scheme to boot. Alas, The New Frontier has since become a thing of the past (been to Tomorrow Land lately?), but thanks to Irwin Allen we can still experience the future as it should have been.
I built this version of Lunar Models' Spindrift about ten years ago, and it remains one of my favorite kits.
Lunar's kits typically require a bit of finessing, but despite all the prep work (endless sanding, filing, puttying, etc.), the construction process itself was fairly straightforward. The only bit of scratch-building involved the antenna, which I made from a costume-jewelry pearl and five push-pins.
The flight deck, visible through the windshield, was included in an interior kit purchased separately. The passenger cabin was included with the interior kit, but I didn't bother building
it since very little detail would have been visible through the cabin portals (I elected not to light the kit, but were I building it today I probably would reconsider).
The model was primed
with Testors primer straight out of the can (I've since made the switch to Tamiya) and then given several coats of Testors Italian Red.
The stripes were created the old-fashioned way; by masking off the surrounding areas and applying the desired color via Testors - again, straight out of the can (I don't recall the precise colors I used, but they were a pretty close to the stripes on the production model, which I was fortunate enough to have photographs of).
Next up for me is Lunar Models' Proteus, which I've been threatening to build for years.
A word of advice to all you childless model makers out there: BUILD AS MANY MODELS AS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU HAVE KIDS!
Rob McFarlane
|
