# Airfix 1/144 Space Shuttle



## ClubTepes (Jul 31, 2002)

I recently saw that Airfix has a space shuttle stack in 1/144.

I realize that this is not a 'new' tool. They've had it for quite a while.

My question is........ is this their own tool?

I was only aware of the Revell and the Minicraft versions.

If this is their own tool, I'm curious, how does it stack up?
Who's space shuttle has the most accurate contours in 1/144?


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

None of the 1/144 shuttles are great. The Airfix one is no worse than the Revell kit and Revell and Airfix are better than Minicraft's. Probably the best Orbiter kits are the off scale Tamiya and Hasegawa kits.


----------



## miniature sun (May 1, 2005)

Actually the Airfix Shuttle is a pretty decent representation given that it was produced from information gathered prior to the first flight.
They also released a James Bond Moonraker version.
The kit was used extensively in large quantities by the modelmakers detailing the Nostromo and it's refinery during the making of Alien.


----------



## flyingfrets (Oct 19, 2001)

If it's a reboxed version of the old Entex kit (circa 1977), it's the worst of the lot. The orbiter is based on Enterprise which was not a man-rated vehicle and while fairly accurate to Enterprise & passable piggybacked on a 747, it's a wildly inaccurate depiction of a shuttle stacked for spaceflight.


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

The Airfix kit is NOT the Entex kit. However, the Minicraft kit IS the Entex kit (hence my comments above).


----------



## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

The current issue of Airfix Model World, December 2011, has a build article on this kit. The buildup looks pretty good and the kit doesn't look bad at all. The article offers some options to bring it up to speed and is modeled on OV-105's last flight which I supported from the firing room and at the landing site.


----------



## irishtrek (Sep 17, 2005)

Back in the late '70s I had a kit of the shuttle with boosters and external fuel tank in a scale of 1/144 that included something the Revell kit did not have, a cockpit for the orbiter itself along with the display base being molded in transparent blue and some other detailing was a bit more than the Revell kit also. I want to say it was an US AIRFIX but it's been so long I can't say for sure...............
Oh yes before I forget the same company also had ou a B-1 during that time in the same scale.


----------



## myboy (Nov 30, 2011)

The kit was used extensively in large quantities by the modelmakers detailing the Nostromo and it's refinery during the making of Alien.


----------



## ClubTepes (Jul 31, 2002)

It seems as though the nose area of the orbiter is the area most goofed up by the manufacturers.

So which kit has the best nose area contours?

Or better yet, if one wanted to make the best shuttle (forget the rest of the stack for now), what would you have to mix and match to get there.

Such as, who had the best nose, best body, best engines and so forth.


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

Unless you have to have 1/144 where all of the kits are of the same (1970s) vintage and all are based to some extent on the Enterprise, your best bet are the off scale Tamiya and Hasegawa kits. They are not perfect but are good solid models. I like the 1/100 Tamiya kit myself.


----------



## irishtrek (Sep 17, 2005)

The kit I had back in the '70s had no thrusters on the sides of the nose , but it did have them on top, while the Revell kit is just the opposite and it now comes with decals for the thrusters on the top. Also the solid boosters exhaust, I think I spelled that right, from the Revell kit is not as well detailed as the other kit from the '70s. Hope that helps!!


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

None of the 70s kits are great. "Best" is sort of relative for a 1/144 shuttle. None of them have a cargo bay that even remotely resembles the more recent shuttles either and the detailing on the doors, bay interior, satillite cargo, etc are crude and inaccurate. For better or worse the Revell and Minicraft/Entex kits are the only ones still in production, and the Minicraft kit was the poorest of the three original kits (Airfix, Revell, Entex). There may be some detail stuff available in the Realspace aftermarket arena.

Another interesting option is to do a 1/200 Shuttle to go with the reissue of the AMT Man in Space set.


----------



## miniature sun (May 1, 2005)

djnick66 said:


> For better or worse the Revell and Minicraft/Entex kits are the only ones still in production
> 
> 
> > The Airfix kit is back in production...
> ...


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

miniature sun said:


> djnick66 said:
> 
> 
> > For better or worse the Revell and Minicraft/Entex kits are the only ones still in production
> ...


----------



## ClubTepes (Jul 31, 2002)

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the input.

Since I'd like to stay in 1/144, I'd have to skip the other kits.

I really don't want to get too many scales going in my collection.


----------



## irishtrek (Sep 17, 2005)

I went and picked up the Revell kit just last week for 49.00, just a couple bucks more than the Airfix model.
If you want better detailing your best bet for a shuttle model kit is 1/72 scale, the down side to that is of course price not to mention it's twice as big as 1/144.


----------



## swhite228 (Dec 31, 2003)

miniature sun said:


> Actually the Airfix Shuttle is a pretty decent representation given that it was produced from information gathered prior to the first flight.
> They also released a James Bond Moonraker version.
> The kit was used extensively in large quantities by the modelmakers detailing the Nostromo and it's refinery during the making of Alien.


The Airfix shuttle is an Airfix made kit and like minature sun said it has been used for a number of builds.

It's history has it released not only by Airfix but by MPC , USAirfix, and Smithsonian Models. All issues were made by Airfix for the other companies.


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

irishtrek said:


> I went and picked up the Revell kit just last week for 49.00, just a couple bucks more than the Airfix model.
> If you want better detailing your best bet for a shuttle model kit is 1/72 scale, the down side to that is of course price not to mention it's twice as big as 1/144.


The old Monogram and Revell 1/72 shuttles are still less accurate than the tamiya 1/100 kit... bigger does not mean better. 

A problem with pretty much ALL of the Shuttles is they are OLD. They reflect molding limitations, acceptable standards, etc for the late 1970s and early 1980s and not what can be done today, in 2011. The cargo bays and cargo payloads are also dated and not accurate for any half way current configuration.

You can make nice display models out of most of the kits, but all of them take work to some degree or another.


----------



## Jay Chladek (Apr 17, 2001)

Hey guys. CT got ahold of me in PMs since I had some videos up on Youtube that showcased a history of shuttle kits. A lot of my thoughts about the shuttle kits have been posted over at the aircraftresourcecenter.com real space forums. But I thought I might repost some of that here to help out with the decision making. Below is what I originally wrote in 2005 when the topic came up (and shuttles were popular due to the loss of Columbia and Discovery's first return to flight mission). Of course when I posted this, we did not yet have the Revell of Germany kit with its all new decal sheet. I will comment on that at the end. If you want to read the original thread, you can check it out on the original forum as it is a sticky at the top of the real space forum page. There is A LOT of stuff covered in it.

_Well, there is more then one way to do a good shuttle. Unfortunately, all the kits due to their age require some form of aftermarket tweeks to really make them shine IMHO. The reason is that all the kits were issued before Columbia's first flight in 1981. But thankfully, you don't need that much work._

_Anyway, in 1/144 scale, here are the pros and cons of each kit (all are the launch configuration kits with ET & SRBs)._

_Minicraft kit: Pretty good set of solid rocket boosters and external tank. The external tank has no ribbed detailing on the intertank area, so that will need to be added with strip or half-round styrene bits if you so desire. The kit is lacking a little in the attachment strut and fuel line department (nothing that can't be fixed with a little styrene strip). The detailing on the orbiter is nice, but the nose is way wrong and it can't be fixed without a lot of effort. However, the kit does have some nice parts that you can scrounge for other shuttle projects, such as a flight deck interior, nice decals and a decent payload bay. The ET & SRBs would also work well if you got your hands on a Revell kit of the orbiter only as both kits could be combined for a decent stack. The Minicraft kit also has a nice launch pad display base which will work with the Airfix shuttle stack as well._

_Revell kit: The orbiter looks decent and can be built up nice. Its payload bay is a little lacking here, but that isn't a problem if you are doing a launch stack with the doors closed anyway. the engine bells aren't quite right and should be replaced with resin aftermarket engines from Meteor Productions or Realspace. The SRBs and ET don't look quite as good as those in the other kits, but they are decent and can be built up well. a launch pad display base is provided and it sort of represents the mobile launch platform that the stack sits on at the pad. But, the platform is way too small to accurately represent a correct launch pad and I wouldn't spend much work on it._

_Airfix kit: In my humble opinion, this is the best shuttle stack to get. The orbiter has the right shape and it has the best ET and SRBs with some nice delicate attachment struts and fuel lines. Like the Minicraft ET, the Airfix external tank also has no ribbed detailing on the intertank. But that can be fixed with strip styrene easily enough. With some nice TLC, you can have a really nice looking external tank. The orbiter shape as I said seems to have captured the look of the real thing the best, especially with the wing chord shape. It has two drawbacks though. First of all, the only payload offered for the bay is an ESA spacelab molded into the bay. This isn't a big concern though as the doors won't be open for a launch configuration model anyway (BTW, the doors need to be glued in position anyway). The second problem is the cockpit windows as they look very crude compared to the ones in the Revell kit. My fix for the windows was to glue thin strips of styrene around them to buildup borders and dividers, and then use epoxy putty to blend in the new edges with the body for a seamless appearance once sanded to shape. After I was done, the windows themselves were polished out to bring back the luster to them. When I was done with painting and decaling, I ended up with some of the best looking shuttle windows I had ever accomplished and they looked more accurate then even the Revell kit windows._

_So, in conclusion, the best stack in my opinion is Airfix. A good stack for not as much work is either a Revell stack or a Revell orbiter combined with a Minicraft ET & SRBs._

In that posting, I was ONLY covering the plastic and not adding decals into the mix since to that point, all the shuttle models pretty much required aftermarket replacements depending on which era of shuttle you were doing. Since that time, the Revell of Germany reissue with the full stack introduced an all new decal sheet with practically every little detail seen on a shuttle stack and some nice assists for doing the tiles. This sheet IMHO gives the Revell kit a bit of an edge now in the value for the money department. I have not seen the sheet in the newest Airfix kit issue, but I was consulted on it by somebody who was working on its development. So, to my knowledge it is an update of the artwork that appeared in the 1999-2000 issue, but with the white elevon flipper door covers first seen in the mid-1990s and the artwork is higher quality with much better registration (the older Airfix sheets typically only had 1 sheet in 5 with good enough registration for use). Revell's decals probably still have the edge, but I imagine the Airfix sheet gives you plenty of good stuff for shuttle models and you can likely do a good looking model from what you are provided with as far as decals go.

Here is my result from an Airfix kit I built in 2003-04 (and it took a gold at the IPMS Scale Model World show in Telford, UK in 2004). It is an Airfix kit with resin engine bells, modifications made to the ET and the modified cockpit windows I added to it.


----------



## Jay Chladek (Apr 17, 2001)

miniature sun said:


> Actually the Airfix Shuttle is a pretty decent representation given that it was produced from information gathered prior to the first flight.
> They also released a James Bond Moonraker version.
> The kit was used extensively in large quantities by the modelmakers detailing the Nostromo and it's refinery during the making of Alien.


Speaking of Moonraker, here we have the available kits:









And my replica Moonraker build:









I originally planned to do one of the 1/144 models, but I decided to up my build to 1/72 using the Monogram full shuttle stack kit as I had a few in my stash. I got this thing to look as studio model accurate as I could but some photo analysis of parts of the silo (mainly a crane bridge seen in one of the closeups showcasing that it was made from three Airfix Eagle Transporter spines) led me to conclude that at least the big launch stack studio model and probably some of the intermediate sized orbiters were 1/48 scale. But for me, 1/72 is PLENTY big enough as it looks rather huge on my television set. You can see the rest of the photos of it here:

http://s92.photobucket.com/albums/l31/JMChladek/Moonraker shuttle stack/

I have a half built 1/144 Mooraker stack now that will likely never be finished as a Moonraker (Revell orbiter, Minicraft ET and SRBs). As an alternative, I am probably going to finish it as the Marine shuttle as I've got some good screen captures of that model (complete with checkerboard black and white SRB nose sections).


----------



## irishtrek (Sep 17, 2005)

A local hobby shop, Bridgetowm Hobbies, had a Moonraker shuttle kit just last week and it ain't one of those shown here. I do intend to go there later this afternoon and I will get the name of the kit maker at that time and post it here if any one's interested.


----------



## Jay Chladek (Apr 17, 2001)

It was probably one of the 1/288 scale Doyusha kits. Those were offered about a decade ago and didn't sell too well as they are a bit overpriced for what they are (although you get figures for Bond, Holly and Jaws). As such, I occassionally see them at retail.


----------



## djnick66 (May 2, 2008)

Yeah Doyusha has a rather poor Moonraker kit but, as mentioned, it has some decent figures. FYI they did an Astin Martin/Goldfinger kit with figures of Bond and Odd Job and a Toyota 2000 kit with a couple of figures. I suspect the shuttle stack is the same kinda crappy one sold by Minicraft


----------



## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

Well this shuttle thread really has me chomping at the bit to do a 1/144 shuttle, very appropriate for me! I have the big Monogram kit but am not ready to tackle it yet. I think, from what Jay said, that the Revell Germany kit will be my choice. I have a set of the tile decals I picked up some years back to use as well as a set of resin engines from RealSpace. I also took some pictures of the entire shuttle stack when I was over in the VAB during the STS-135 mission I planned on using for adding extra details. I guess this might be my first big post-retirement project. I would like to take it to a Jacksonville IPMS contest in early February but I don't know if I can get it done in time. At least by Wonderfest though.


----------



## irishtrek (Sep 17, 2005)

Jay Chladek said:


> It was probably one of the 1/288 scale Doyusha kits.


That it was and they are asking about 35.00 for it, while just last week they had an Acadamy kit the same scale for about 20.00 less!!! I went out there to get the Acadamy kit in order to turn it into the Daedalus class from Star Trek to go with the PL 350 TOS when it comes out. Maybe next time.


----------

