Know exactly what these Merlin kits are: an attempt of
Kaos to disrupt the modeling world, to sow utter confusion among unsuspected
modelers, to drive Control mad trying to build unbuildable, amorphous lumps of
plastic in a vain, futile effort to obtain a model!
This "kit" should be a prominent character in one
of Poe's or Nathaniel Hawthorne's scary stories, or be in one of H.P.
Lovecraft's Cthulhu myths...
Oh, the horror...
If you have the strength of heart, and can bear it, you may
consult the step-by-step Modeling Noire genre story here:
Yes, after all that time and inordinate amount of
painstaking effort, a not totally indecent model was produced. Was it worth it?
Get yourself a Planet Lockheed Air Express (I did after
this!) and trash this miserable lump of Merlin plastic if it happened to have
sneakily crawled into your stash. Or donate it to a Museum of Horrors,
to be displayed aside (or better in) the torture chamber.
Or wait, if you don't like resin kits or their prices are
not for your modeling pocket, until a manufacturer produces these Golden Age
beauties in styrene form.
One very good
thing came of it, though: I commissioned the decal sheet from Arctic Decals
(the kit decal sheet was as miserable -and wrong- as the plastic), and it is
superb, of exquisite quality.
So I now have spare decals for my other Air Express, yippee!
I represented the plane as flown by Frank Hawks in the 1929
National Air Tour, as a pathfinder plane for the entrants.
Once again I reiterate that this plane went through a large number of modifications in details and marks (some listed on the building post), so be careful, if you attempt
to model it, with your research, and base it not on drawings, but on photos.
A really beautiful TEXACO classic airplane.
ReplyDeleteGeorge F.
Thanks George!
Delete... anyway, wouldn't be better to built it from scratch? CONGRATULATIONS! George F.
ReplyDeleteThe ideal solution is the Planet kit, actually.
Delete