Reviews : Moebius Convair-Ehricke Nuclear Exploratory

Back at the beginning of the space age von Braun's rocket team had lots of ideas for spaceships. Kraft Erhicke from the team came up with a few concepts and this was one. A spacecraft powered by nuclear engines that would explore the solar system. I really like these '50s designs so picked this one up. It is another great Moebius kit that goes together relatively easy and is fairly simple to build. One big caveat is the long boom which is made two plastic halves. I glued it together but working along it kept breaking. Finally frustrated I looked in my parts drawer of aluminum tubes and found one exactly the diameter. I cut it to length and used it instead and it provided an extremely strong and nice looking boom as I left it the natural aluminum color. The decals went on nice and the final model looks great on my space shelf.

The early enthusiasm of what might have been in the Space Age is wonderfully rendered here. Its value as a museum piece would have been sufficient to rate a 5. However, there are a few drawbacks. The two-piece plastic neck is a problem. The parts were slightly warped enough to bother me, so I replaced it with a 12 inch length of 7/32 aluminum tubing. I scored it in several places to simulate joints. By using the entire tube, the length of the neck better matches the actual artwork from the late 1950s. I'm also not a fan of the decals replacing molded detail on the crew compartment. There is no 4.5 available, so I begrudging assign it a score of 4

This ship model was a good size (20 x 3 1/4) when finished. Parts went together, glued and painted without any problems, instruction sheet was detailed. This ship being 20 inches in length needs a good roomy space to display as it is an excellent model, very detailed and nice to look at. I don't see any drawbacks to this kit, decals are nice as well.

This kit is rather, nice, with well molded details. I found most of it to go together pretty well, but there are seams that will need to be addressed. While I was working on prepping it for paint, the assembled neck on mine snapped near the glue joint, the plastic there is pretty weak. I'll be replacing the neck on mine with a steel tube.

It's so nice to see classic kits return and I have like you waited for many years. This kit is really good and only the main support beam for the crew cabin is the only con. I used steel tube for a replacement. As with all old kits. Using modern tools And wet/dry sandpaper and airbrush. Makes old kits stand out. Scott LaVoie