Tuesday 6 January 2015

FROG Phantom fun - part 1

I bought this old kit as part of a cheap batch a few years back - without any clear idea of a purpose for it.  In 2014, of course, with the arrival of the Little Cold Wars project, having a 1/72 Phantom suddenly seemed like a great idea.  Again.
Now I had never built a Phantom in 1/72 before.  1/330 yes.  1/285 yes. 1/32 (!) yes.  But never 1/72.
Even without such experience, however, I soon spotted that a fairly significant part was missing.  For the moment I'll let you guess what that is...
Despite it's advanced age this kit went together quite well.  It came with a pleasing array of explody stuff to hang on the wings. Markings were provided for two aircraft - RAF and Royal Navy.  But being a Phantom there are no shortage of other options.......


8 comments:

Milgeek said...

Oh that's a bit spooky Tim, I was just looking up FROG kits last night for nostalgia sake. What I didn't know is a lot of FROG's original kits were taken over by other companies after they ceased trading. Apparently FROG aficionados call these kits 'frog spawn'!

I remember - as a kid - there being a pecking order for buying kits. You bought AIrfix first, if you couldn't buy Airfix you bought Revell, and if you couldn't but Revell you resorted to FROG (Matchbox came later to provide more variety).

I was surprised to read that FROG kits were sometimes not as bad as reputation paints them. (Hence Revell taking over some of the moulds.)

The one FROG kit I can clearly remember making was their Vultee Vengance...

Sorry, trip down memory lane there!

peter said...

I'm not a builder of planes myself but I always enjoy to see what the others make of it. Looking forward to the progress of this model!

Greetings
Peter

Martin Rapier said...

I'm looking forward to finding out what the missing part is. It wouldn't be the tail fin by any chance?

Tim Gow said...

Stephen Beat
Interesting. I remember Frog as being generally pretty good kits, and at least as good as Airfix. After Frog folded some of the kits turned up in the UK under the Novo brand - made in the USSR! The characteristics of those early (c.1977) Novo kits included poor parts fit and decals which rather unhelpfully dissolved in water!

Tim Gow said...

Peter
As my work on this blog demonstrates, I'm not much of a kit builder myself!

Tim Gow said...

Martin Rapier
That might have been less inconvenient!

Paul Foster said...

Bullpups?

I did not realize you Brits used them until I looked it up.

The fit seems okay. What is the plastic like?

Tim Gow said...

Paul Foster
The plastic is just fine - not unlike Matchbox or recent Airfix.