More about Heller

I just wish they would put out what they had back in the 70's or so relating to WWII ships. I'm working on the Richelieu right now and could use some companion ships, more than just the German and British kits. That and a Dunkurque  that was partially built went for over $170.00 on e-bay a couple of weeks ago!.

Tracy

zaphod wrote:

Right now I'm working on the Heller kit of Le Redoubtable. It's a great little kit. I have also had great fun building their Ariane IV and Ariane V launch vehicles.

i have that kit in my stash maybe when your done you could post some pics to inspire me to move on the kit

Very interesting indeed!  I'd like to see that book - though my rusty, barbaric French probably wouldn't be up to reading it.

Those numbers regarding the Soleil Royal sound impressive, but I have a little trouble believing them.  Quite a few photos of that model in the Musee de la Marine are available.  There is simply no way that the people responsible for designing the Heller kit actually looked at that model carefully, or took measurements of it.  (How could they miss the camber of the decks, or the open balconies on the quarter galleries?)  That vast number of hours for drawing the plans presumably includes the time it took to draw (back in pre-computer days) each individual part of the plastic kit. 

I believe the figure for the time spent writing the instructions - the original French ones, that is.  It would have been nice if somebody had expended a little effort on the English "translation" that's included with the kits sold in England and the U.S.  That document is a disgrace.  It apparently was written by somebody who neither understood French nor attempted to build the model.  (The English instructions for the Victory are almost as bad.)

I have no idea what Polish set of plans for the Victory they used, but those plans were good.  (This is an extremely well-researched ship; several good sets of plans of her have been published, and I suspect they are in many respects based on each other.  Poland apparently has an extremely distinguished naval architectural drafting tradition.  The drawings by Janos Skulski in the Conway Anatomy of the Ship series are among the finest I've ever seen.)  I think they got a few details wrong for 1805 (the height of the forecastle bulwarks being the most conspicuous), but just about everybody else has made the same errors.  In any case, this time they produced a genuine scale model.  And they did some rather unusual things that took some nerve.  (I personally think they were right in omitting the ornate entry ports on the ship's sides - though I'm certainly receptive to any genuine evidence to the contrary.)  The whole kit has a different feel to it than the Soleil Royal.

That list of kits that might have been is mouth-watering.  By the late seventies, Heller had learned how to do sailing ship kits.  Sounds like we almost had a reconstruction of the Battle of Trafalgar at our disposal.