Various Scale Chinese Bargains

Gallery Article by Greg Kerry on Sept 5 2013

 

 

Thought you might like to see the kind of cheap aircraft kits that Chinese school kids lavish their pocket money on.

This series of (fairly) modern planes is sold mostly at the kind of pavement stalls found outside most urban schools here - I've never seen them on sale in actual model shops.

Scales vary from an alleged 1/165 up to 1/115 though I wouldn't stake much on the accuracy of those. As you can see, the kits are sold in simple brown cardboard boxes with a color picture on the front. And they really are cheap.

I bought a bunch just to play around with them. They look quite good at first glance being true snap-together models. Panel lines are horribly overdone, trailing edges and missile fins etc are way too thick, canopies are molded in a surprising clear brown plastic, undercarriage parts are best thrown away, and decals are simply unspeakable (generic cut out and self-adhering).

 

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However, when stuck together, with the canopies glossed black they don't look half bad. With the RDA Gunship (actually a SF model from the movie Avatar) I tried filling in some of the panel lines, adding a little detail to the front of the engines, and using real decals. The result was good enough to make me try another.

Most of the examples here are Chinese versions of Russian originals. Best of the bunch is the Z-10 helo which is supposed to be 1/115 but looks pretty close to 1/72 to me.

They're also good enough to try out some would-be SF finishes as I did with the all-orange Su-27.

They're not Airfix, Matchbox, or Frog - but I guess they serve a similar purpose.

Greg Kerry

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Photos and text © by Greg Kerry