1/144 USS Arizona ?

I found a Hobby Boss 1/350 kit this afternoon in Sacramento at Riverside Hobbies, for $ 40.00. looking forward to building her next year.

I agree with EdGrune, and he knows a heck of a lot more about the industry than I ever will.  What I do know is the detail on the 1/200 Arizona from Trumpeter is a couple of orders of magnitude better than the 1/350 Trumpeter/Banner/Mini Hobby is.  Is it perfect?  No!  But it does appear to be the best representation yet made of the Arizona in a plastic kit, from the waterline up.  Plus, this kit appears to have been designed for RCers.  Lindberg has never shown, to me anyway, that they are capable of putting this level of detail on one of their RC-intended ship models, and I doubt their 1/144 Arizona would have broken this pattern.  Yes, the 1/144 size would be awesome, but Lindberg would have had to completely redesign it from the keel up if they wanted to be competitive with this Trumpeter.  Either that, or sell it for no more than $150.  I think Trumpeter, pending the sales response to this model (which I understand is excellent, so far), might release a full RC package for this kit, or re-release the kit with a full RC package included.  Please understand, I have absolutely no proof that this may be so.  It is just my feeling due to the way this kit is designed.  It even has two stub mounts molded into the underside of each gun deck, under each of the 5" guns, for mounting of gears and/or levers for animating these guns to rotate and elevate.  Plus, there are cutouts molded into the Main Deck, directly under the Boat Deck 5"/25 gun positions so these can be animated through the Main Deck!  Trumpeter was really planning toward the future with this model, in my opinion.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes ...

Shipbuilderjake

In doing some fishing I found this on Cybermodeler online and found it highly interesting. Lindberg releasing a 1/144 USS Arizona BB-39 Kit number 70820, due out in December 2010. Was wanting the Trumpeter 1/200 Arizona but now I don't know...Here's the link.

 http://www.cybermodeler.com/special/2010_naval_subj.shtml

That notice on Cybermodeler about the Lindberg Arizona is about a year old and is based on their showing of a one-off master of the model by a 'renowned master modeler' at the 2009 iHobby Expo.   The former president of Lindberg and driving force behing that project resigned from the company rather abruptly around the first fo the year.

Unfortunately, once a product gets put on Cybermodeler's lists of upcoming kits it seems that the only way it gets taken off is that the kit actually sees the light of day   The editors of Cyberhobby are not atuned to the net world away from product release notices.     In other words -- don't hold your breath waiting for the kit. 

Much was posted about what was wrong on the 1:144 master shown at IHobby Expo.  Compare that to what has been posted about what Trumpeter has done right with their 1:200 offering.    If you must have a large scale Arizona, and want to see it sometime in the next decade,  go for the Trumpeter

There is another post about this already that you might want to check out.

/forums/t/120750.aspx?PageIndex=1

I did find one refference to a site offering it for pre-order at $299, but that was posted more than a year ago and there is no mention of the model on the lindberg site.

I am a little confused but the evidence seems to be that the kit will not be coming out in the near future if ever.  Sadly if it does, being a Lindberg product I would expect that it would likely be plagued by inaccuracies and a toy-like appearance as many of their large scale offerings have been in the last few years.

On the down side though at that size and scale it would have been awsome to take out to Wildcat, Island, or Kitsap Lake as an RC and inaccuracy be darned.