Hasegawa 1/48 Voyager Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The Voyager series of spacecraft were designed for deep space exploration with instrumentation to study the outer planets powered by a small nuclear generator. Two spacecraft were launched on slightly different trajectories in 1977. Both were intended to take a closer look at Jupiter and Saturn but their health and capabilities are still in use today as the spacecraft now explore the bow wave of our solar system as it pushes through the deep space forces within our galaxy.

Hasegawa continues to produce some very interesting subjects and this kit is no exception. We have a 1/48th scale kit of the Voyager spacecraft depicted with its instrumentation booms deployed. The kit is molded in styrene and presented on five parts trees - two in black, one in white, one in clear blue, and one in gold plate. A curved metal wire is also included to connect the Voyager model to its display stand.

The spacecraft is nicely detailed with all of the structures and instrumentation enclosures all rendered. The booms are rendered in plastic to make this model an easy build, but the AMS modeler will want these booms rendered in photo-etch to better represent the scale and fine detail of the full-scale examples. LVM Studios has produced such a set here.

The kit has a clear blue display stand with a silhouette of the continents on the exposed hemisphere to represent Earth. When I was unpacking this kit for taking pictures, there was something wrapped up in white paper with the wire and the blue stand. It was the gold-plated styrene part and this will teach me to work with my glasses on in the future. As I squinted to figure out what these golden parts were, the subject came in loud and clear:

Kudos to Hasegawa for having a sense of humor! I have a hunch that this figure will become our new 'Golden Gray Award' for some suitable achievement (or lack thereof) in the hobby industry.

If you're a spacecraft modeler, here at last is the first kit of this subject in styrene. If you're a Star Trek fan, you'll also want this kit as it is also V'ger (though you'll have some scratchbuilding to do to replicate the rest of the spacecraft that was built around the original Voyager 6 spacecraft. I also like the alien figure with its gesture of peace. Too bad nobody has done a figure like this of a generic gray (or Paul) in such a pose in a larger scale.

Here is a list of paints Hasegawa identifies for the colors of this kit and the equivalent colors from other brands:

My sincere thanks to Hasegawa USA for this review sample!