Fireball XL5 |
| By Brian Thewlis |
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Another of Gerry Anderson's great creations is Fireball XL5. Created in 1962, it was one of the earlier attempts at supermarionation puppetry, developed further in Thunderbirds and finally the definitive Captain Scarlet series. This kit is released by Comet Miniatures at approximately 1/144 scale. It's cast in cream resin, with some nice metal parts, some vacformed canopies and a launch rail. This kit was mastered by our own Ian Walsh (Stargazer). At first glance the casting looked really nice, some of the casting stubs located in strange places (nothing to with the masters I might add. I checked!). However during construction some issues were discovered. More on that later. The model started off easily enough as there are really only 6 parts to the main body, all around the wings and engines and 2 resin and 5 metal parts for Fireball Junior, the forward detachable pod. There are also the parts for the launch rail and rocket assist takeoff unit. So getting construction over quick smart we went onto the goof coat of primer to spot the flaws --and out they come! A gazillion pinholes covered the bottom of the fuselage area.. aaarghhh! These were filled and sanded. Filled and sanded.. and filled and sanded until 96% were gone and I finally gave up on the last few. Then I stupidly filled the vertical take off jets, but then promptly re drilled after getting the good oil on what they were really (Thanks Stargazer). I have to stress here that the model is cast by others, not Stargazer! After that, it is pretty straight forward, with the final icky bit being getting the vacformed transparency on Fireball Junior to fit nicely, mine still doesn't but I weighed up the 'is it worth stressing over?' factor, gave a Gallic shrug of the shoulders and moved on. |
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Getting down to paint, I wanted to replicate the nice metallic finish as best as I could. This meant I had to undercoat with white first and get the yellow/red tail and the blue fuselage bands painted. These were then masked off then gloss black sprayed. This served as a base for the Alclad finish. I used polished aluminium then picked out some panels with a Testors Aluminium and also used a bit of SnJ polishing powder to finish of with a bit of variation in colour and tone. Ok, that is the main ship done. The kit also includes a launch rail and while it is ok I chose to build my own from Plastic stock to give me more control and mount on the base that is required to really set this off. Further I also enhanced some of the detail of the launch rockets by drilling out out the rocket exhausts and adding plastic tube rings. All in all the model comes out ok, it looks like Fireball XL5 and brings back heaps of memories of much earlier years watching it as a kid. Highly recommended model. | |
