Trumpeters USS Arizona

1/200 ?? I just did a google search for fun, didn't see anything and I certainly haven't heard of it.

Is it proposed?

Banner made a new 1/350 Arizona?  Got a link to that?  Are your sure it's a new Arizona, not a reissue of their old one?

Jesse

usmc1371 wrote:

Banner made a new 1/350 Arizona?  Got a link to that?  Are your sure it's a new Arizona, not a reissue of their old one? Jesse

The pedigree ... the good folks at the Wasan Moulding company pentographed the 1:426 Revell Arizona to 1:350 scale.  In the process the fixed some issues with the old Revell kit and introduced some of their own (i.e. turret spacing).   Wasan's brand name was Banner (as in Red Banner).  

See Brad Chaucer's 2001 review of the then-new Banner Arizona, including a side-by-side comparison with the Revell.

http://www.steelnavy.com/ArizonaBanner350.htm

The good folks at Wasan, fearing that Red Banner wasn't too good a name,  changed their company name to Trumpeter.   They also made an off-brand label called Mini Hobby Models.   Mini Hobby Models is the pirate arm of Trumpeter, producing lower quality copies of others work.

So, as far as the 1:350 scale Arizona ... Banner = Trumpeter = MiniHobby Models

Now there is a new larger scale version of the Arizona model being released .  Has Trumpeter fixed anything, or are the propagating the problems from the 1:350 kit?

Why the Arizona?  It has name recognition.  Same reason as the Yamato, Missouri, Bismarck

Yeah, I figured the Banner was 'new' as in new tooling.  I did the Banner Arizona about 3 years ago.  I hope the Trumpeter one is new tooling.  The Banner kit still had a lot issues such as raised seams on the deck and a nasty seam around the gun deck.  One of the kits, either Mini-Hobbies or Banner, had the lower hull designed for motorization.  The aft end had a hugh square box for the motor that was visible on the outside of the hull.

If the Trumpeter model is new tooling with PE thrown in, I might just buy it.

Jesse

badbird356 wrote:

How big would a 1/200 USS Arizona be?

The Pennsylvania-class was 608.5 feet (LOA).   A 1:200 model would be a hair over 3 feet long

Don't forget Hobby Boss........that's Trumpeter too......their line is just armor and aircraft right now.

Trumpeter aka Godzilla.........

usmc1371 wrote:

If the Trumpeter model is new tooling with PE thrown in, I might just buy it.

 I think PE rails in 1/200th scale would look wrong.... too flat. Not sure what the fix is other than white metal railings (shudder) or plastic (shudder). Tom Harrison from Tom's Modelworks told me either earlier this year or late last that one of his 350th kits had been sent back to aid with the development of the  200th kit. I hope they used more than that though....

I agree with you concerning PE railings at 1/200.  But I'm sure there are other areas on a 1/200 Arizona that could benefit from PE.

Jesse

Bluejacket makes 3/16" tall (3' in 1/192, 37.5" in 1/200) brass stanchions with three holes that accept .006" brass wire.  While a little too heavy to be perfectly in scale, they have the advantage of producing a fairly strong railing and, in my opinion, look better than the typically flat PE railings.   An example of them can be seen here on a 1/192 scratchbuilt model of  HMS Abdiel that I built some years ago:

http://smmlonline.com/articles/abdiel/abdiel12.jpg

Tom's Modelworks also makes two and three hole 1/200 scale PE stanchions that I am going to try on a current project.  They are very delicate, much closer to scale, and the holes will barely accept .004" stainless steel wire, which is the smallest rigid wire I have been able to find.

The best photoetched railings in this scale were produced by Classic Warships for their 1/192 Sims class destroyer kit.  While flat, the stanchions and railings were produced at or very near scale sizes, which resulted in railing lines about the thickness of a human hair, but these were extremely fragile and difficult to work with.