Has anyone got the complete list of Heller's 1/150 tall ship models?

Dimension is beam, but the multiplication factor makes a guess at scale just a guess.

Measuring sailing ship kits to determine scale is really difficult.

Dimensions on the box don’t mean much.

Probably the most dependable

I know the late Dr. Tilley mentioned this multiple times, but I’ ll repeat it here:  The Gorch Fock and the USCGC Eagle do not share the same hull. The Eagle is about 20 feet longer.  This makes converting the GF kit a big project, if you want an accurate Eagle.  The Heller kit (and the currently available Revell Germany Gouch Fock re-issue) are models of the Gorch Fock, not the Eagle.

Nino

 

     I am sure Manufacturers would love to know what scale sells the best for sailing ship kits.  Is  1/200 too small to rig and 1/100 too expensive to buy?  1/150 fits right in the middle;  not so big it's difficult to display, not so small that it looks like a toy.  Any thoughts?

     Nino

 

I'm with you, Nino.  I consider 150 a great scale.  Once in awhile I get a 1:100 kit, maybe once in a decade.  I think the price on those went up steeper than inflation.  Plus, I don't like to buy that many 2000+ piece kits any more often than that. I have been working on my Soleil Royal for 15 years now!  I built the Superbe 1:150 in about four to five months.  Great kit.

warshipguy

I just tripped over this thread and thought that I would add something even now.  The Heller "Cap Horn" was simply an attempt to get more mileage of their excellent kit of the Preussen....

Bill

 

Post photos? Super simple.

I will PM you.

I just tripped over this thread and thought that I would add something even now.  The Heller "Cap Horn" was simply an attempt to get more mileage of their excellent kit of the Preussen.  Unfortunately, no five-masted barque existed named "Cap Horn".  However, the German Flying P Line did have a vear sister to the Preussen, a five-masted barque named Potosi.  With a little research, one can build a reasonably accurate Potosi from  this kit.  I have started doing just that. I will keep everyone informed and post photos if I can ever figure out how to do so.

Bill

Robertone139 wrote:

New ones (to me) keep popping up here and there (mostly Ebay) and I have no idea which ones are real and which ones are fictitious. A web search for the "Cap Horn" returned no results. Is anyone keeping a tally? Thanks.

The "renamed reissue" has, as millard suggests, been a big component of the plastic sailing ship kit game for a long time.  For example, the big, three-foot-long Revell kits have long been generally regarded as sort of the centerpieces of the plastic sailing ship kit world.  I've lost track of just how many names those kits have appeared under, but there actually were only three different ones:  the Cutty Sark, Kearsarge, and Constitution.  The last of those was originally released (according to Dr. Graham's book) in 1965 (that's 44 years ago).  Revell started the "renamed reissue" as early as 1960, when it reboxed its 1/96 Cutty Sark under the name Thermopylae.  (The real Cutty Sark and Thermopylae looked quite similar from a distance - but that's about it.)

Revell's first sailing ship, the 1/192 Constitution, first appeared in 1956; the most recent one from the U.S. part of the company (i.e., not including the several nice releases from Revell Germany) was the excellent little Viking ship, initially released in 1977 - 32 years ago.  The company has been out of the sailing ship kit business considerably longer than it was ever in it.

I've often wondered how the other parts of the scale modeling would react if the manufacturers treated them the way sailing ship enthusiasts have been treated for the past 40 years.  What would the aviation enthusiasts think, for instance, if a kit manufacturer slapped some different decals on its B-17 and called it a B-52?  (Heck, one's called a "Flying Fortress" and the other's called a "Stratofortress"; how many people will really know the difference?)  That's the rough equivalent of what Revell did when it repackaged most of the components of its H.M.S. Bounty in a box with the name "H.M.S. Beagle" on it. 

No point in getting on that particular soap box again; sorry.

considering the more "modern" ships of the 20th century or late 19th, I am pretty sure that Heller made the following in 1/150:

-Pamir German four-masted barque, sunk by storm in the 50s

-Passat, sister to above but without sails, still existing as a museum ship

-Gorch Fock II three-masted barque, the one that still sails with the Bundesmarine totay

-Preussen, as mentioned, five-masted full-rigged ship

-Cap Horn, five-masted barque. This one is a cash-in on Preussen as it depicts a totally fictional ship by simply changing the Preussen rig.

-Amerigo Vespucci, three-masted Italian training ship built in 1931 afaik. 

-smaller, but fitting to the line of "modern" sailing ships, is Amphritite, a 1890s-three-mast barquentine which was changed to schooner and is now still operating for a German training or youth association. Colour changed to spiffy natural wood overall, I have seen the vessel in 1997 when she was in Helgoland Harbour and got a load of Beck´s beer.  Amphitrite´s scale is sometimes stated 1/200 in catalogues, but 1/150 seems corrcet.

Heller made  three Amphitrite-"half-sisters" to capitalize on the hull parts: steam Yacht "La Fauvette", "LÁlcyon" two-mast slaver chaser and 1/250 for-masted barque "Belle Etoile". All of those can be considered purely fictional with the latter being downright ridiculous in utilizing a yacht type hull for a really big sailing ship. 

All of these kits are (with the exception of the "spinn-offs" of course) very well made and look very accurate and authentic. Some feature full rigging details (at least Pamir and Passat), some don´t. My only complaint is that there is no hull plating below the waterline and that the deck planking is in fact too wide for the scale, but this is a common fault through all ages of plasic ships including the latest 1/350 warships. They just don´t learn it.

The old Cutty Sark model was in the Heller Catalogue as "Epervier". In the early 80s I was one of the misguided buyers who thought they had bought a french vessel, but upon opening the box I quickly realized that I had a Cutty Sark in front of me. 

John very true Heller did a lot of reissues. Revell was also very notorius very that too during the seventies and eighties. The cost of new molds and the lack of sales was the main reason these companies would either just put them in a different labeled box and reissue them under a different title. This made it look like new models were coming out to public.They also would change a few parts and do like the Cutty Sark-Thermopylae-Pedro Nunes conversion from one hull mold.

Fact in the last 10/15 years the only companies that have come out with new sailing ship kits are Trumpeter and Zvezda.Zvezda recently has been repoping old Heller and Revell molds. That again is because of the cost. Put it in a new box with different title and buyers think its new kit. Sorry I got a way from the subject.

Rod

here the link to their website. http://www.heller.fr/en/catalogue.html

 you can download the catalog and see what they currently produce.

I'm not one of Heller's biggest fans (though I think its best sailing ship kits - e.g., the Victory and La Reale - are among the best ever produced).  And I certainly can't claim to have kept track of the seemingly endless issues and reissues.  But I think I do remember that the one Heller labels Cape Horn (or was it "Cap Horn"; I don't remember) was in fact a reissue of one of the company's latter-day German steel windjammers - either the Pamir/Passat (those two really were near-identical sisters, so the use of the same parts for the two kits wasn't incorrect) or the Preussen (which was the only five-masted full-rigged ship every built anywhere, so any release of that kit under a different name would be totally spurious).

Heller was utterly notorious for squeezing the maximum number of kits out of a set of molds.  Some of its kits - especially in the company's early days - were reissues of foreign ships under completely phony French names.  Perhaps the ultimate example was the apppearance of the old Aurora Cutty Sark in a Heller box with the name...welll, something French that I've forgotten.  I believe a number of old Pyro sailing ships got Frenchified the same way.

Here's a couple more 1/150 scale that I found. L'Alcyon and L' Amphitrite. They did a few in 1/100 and more in 1/200 and one the La Belle Etoile in 1/250 scale. The catalog list the Nina and Pinta at 1/75 scale. But the Santa Maria at 1/90.The funny thing is the Conqusitador is listed as 1/75 but Heller used the Santa Maria hull for this kit. The scales on most of these aren't close but they are still fun to build.

Rod

Add "Le Superbe" to that list too

Richard

These I know for sure. I have them in my stash.

1/150 scale Cape Horn,Pamir,Preussen,Grande Hemine,Le Glorieux,Le Phenix and The Americo Vespucci. I believe there was a couple more at that scale but I don't remember the names. Then theres  groups at 1/200 scale,1/100 scale 1/75 scale, and 1/50 scale. I'll look tomorrow I have a full catalog somewhere in my files.Hope that helps.

Rod