Air Conditioners and Satellite Dishes

Here we take a look at the release of a set of Air Conditioners and Satellite Dishes from MiniArt in 1/35th scale.

Review

This offering from MiniArt is packaged in one of their end opening cartons, with an artist’s impression of the contents on the front, and assembly instructions on the rear. Inside is a single plastic bag, that contains three sprues, a decal sheet and an envelope with some photo etch. The parts are all undamaged, but I am sure that you won’t be in the least surprised to hear my say that I wish they would not package decals with sprues. 

The offerings in this set from MiniArt, provides you with four satellite dishes, in two sizes the mounting arms for them and receivers for the dishes. The modeller themselves will need to add the wiring element, but it is otherwise ready to go as is. Moving on to the air conditioner, you unfortunately only get the one in the set. It includes the fan for blowing/sucking air across the cooling vanes, and photo etch parts are provided for the various metal grilles required, to give it a realistic appearance. A large fuse board for high voltage electricity is provided with an open door, that could also be shown closed and as is an electrical socket box, cabling between these elements will need to be sourced by the modeller, but it should not create any major difficulties in my opinion. The support frame for an externally mounted air conditioner is provided, and a final nice touch is that on the sprue itself, are some bolt heads for use with the elements to show them attached/bolted to the wall. I am unsure of the region where this set is intended for use, but some English graffiti has been provided on a decal sheet, which I believe would mean the UK/USA. Without the decals you could spread their use far and wide.

Conclusion

This release from MiniArt in 1/35th scale, is an unusual offering in that it would appear to be set up for use in Britain or the USA, and I feel that it is unlikely to be wanted for that purpose. At the same time, if you disregard the decals I see no reason why the parts themselves could not be used in any setting as building fixtures to add that visual interest, that can sometimes by difficult to achieve.