I'm a little fuzzy about just how the food chain works, but the masters are made domestically, the parts are manufactured in China, and somewhere in the mix, the Chinese are responsible for the final size of the kit. Fine and dandy if everyone's got their measurements right, but if something's off in the translation, like the alleged 1/1000 Klingon D-7, we wind up with a kit a bit too big, parts that don't quite fit right, and a Chinese company denying any and all responsibility for the screwup. The really frelled up part is that PL actually got the problems corrected the first time around. For some unknown reason, though, with the Round 2 rerelease, they've gone back to the original incorrect molds.
They're not out, the darn kit doesn't even exist yet. They're taking preorders (or taking "wishlist" submissions). It says "out of stock" on their page because they haven't gotten any yet. But I'm sure you can also preorder at www.culttvman.com
If I was following Tom Sasser's progress reports on the 1/350 refit correctly, he did final mechanical parts drawings, and those were sent to China, and the Chinese engineers took his drawings and crafted the masters from them. Parts were molded in China and sent back to the US for approval, corrections noted on more drawings and the process repeated until everyone was happy. I seemed to me that all the physical modeling was done in China. Tom was always noting how the Chinese screwed up his carefully researched measurements and sent back a part that wasn't exact to his specs.
Is there any way to contact the head guy at round2 and see if they cant get the whole D-7 fiasco worked out?
Welcome aboard. I'm "John P" over there. Tome Lowe is the head of R2. You might be able to get his attention in the sci fi modeling section. Maybe.
Definitely a must have. I posted in the what you'd like to see in 1/1000 th scale, figure I'll include it here too. It would be nice if this company, or someone else, made accessory kits, in this scale, to enable us to kitbash ships without paying a fortune for resin kits. It would be wonderful if there were series put out of nacelles (different styles, etc.), bridge modules, rollbars, shuttles, etc. It would be much like some of the major manufacturers do for their various equipment and accessory sets. Can't hurt to wish.
That's interesting. I wonder, out of every trek kit sold, how many do you suppose: a) are assembled OOB by introductory model building fans, with no thought to accurization/customization; b) are "collected" to just warm a shelf space someplace; or c) are totally tricked out by detail obsessed fans (like me, Forbin, and several others here and at Hobbytalk). If the option (a) above is the vast majority, then I doubt there would be much profit in releasing the kitbash kit you describe. OTOH if option (c) is bigger than I expect, then that would be a really sweet. It would be like Vance's Schematic Toolkit, but it actual kit form. Sweet. --Alex
That's a great idea! I thought of that back when they released the Polar lights 1701, but then I thought the reason we havent seen this sooner is because there is not a lot of money in that idea.
With the new movie coming out, I think there may be a resurgance of new products, and the like. Many of the hardcore model builders have had to resort to buying multiple kits to construct original designs or kitbash. Most of you know how expensive that can get, especially with the lack of kits around. I think the manufacturers would be surprised how well something like this would sell. Just look at how often you see stuff completely sold out at Cult TV man and other sites.
I intend to do a few model mods with the NU-ENT. One using TOS parts, one with TMP, one I'm calling the "Airship Enterprise" which will use parts from two P-40's and one P-51, and finally one I just intend to blow up.
Me too, both of them would make great additions to any collection. I would also like to see some of the supplementary ships featured as well.