Starship Modeler - Bowman Arts' Spindrift Passenger Compartment Upgrade

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Spindrift Passenger Compartment Upgrade Set

Scale: None stated - in scale with Polar Lights' Spindrift kit

Parts: 8 polyurethane resin

Instructions: Installation notes and paint guide

Decals: N/A

Molding Quality: 8 - no flaws and little flash

Detail: 9 - crisp and well-defined

Accuracy: Not rated - see review

MSRP: $15.00 USD (~$22.20 CAN/ € 14.10 EUR) postpaid, available from Bowman Arts

Overall Rating:

Polar Lights made a lot of modelers happy when they released their reverse-engineered clone of Aurora's old Spindrift from The Land of the Giants. By staying faithful to the original, though, they built in some errors. Lil' Plastic Bits' first upgrade set addresses some of these errors in the passenger compartment.

What You Get

The set consists of six new passenger seats and two window "consoles" for the passenger compartment, plus instructions on painting and installing the pieces.

^ What you get

[Instructions]

There is a template provided for drilling new holes to insert the new seats after sanding off the old seat pedestals.

The pieces themselves are well cast, with no flaws other than some minor flash on my sample. Detail is well defined, straight and consisent. Despite the small size of the parts, the clear definition of detail should make painting the pieces relatively easy. I can't comment on accuracy, as I haven't really studied the subject, but I can say the seats look far better than what the kit comes with.

Assembly should be relatively painless. The window consoles glue directly over the kit shelves. To mount the new seats, you simply shave/sand off the kit's mounting stubs, then drill 6 holes using the template included in the instructions as a guide.

Conclusions

The set itself is nicely done, and should really make your model's passenger compartment stand out - especially if used in conjunction with Dana Huff's decal set. Using it is quite simple, and well within the abilities of any model builder. The only drawback I can see is the price - this set costs almost as much as the kit! It's not an unreasonable price though for what you get ... so if you want to jazz up your Spindrift, I can highly recommend this conversion.

Many thanks to Bowman Arts for providing the review sample. Manufacturers and retailers, interested in getting your wares reviewed and publicized on a site averaging 3500+ readers a day? Contact us!

Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are those of the reviewer.
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