Hi earthrat,
I am glad that you are on board and you are wise to ask this before you dive in.
I would say that this approach would be fine for some and not for others.
When I discovered Model - Space (actually, we all refer this to as DeAgostini part builds) as they allegedly get you started on one (manual) or magazine as they call it at a time. They will send you the parts for you to build at that time with the manual. Then they have it calculated or figured that about one month or six weeks, you should be ready for the next (manual) or magazine with more parts. Great idea. But, it is so very unfortunate that many here on this forum have suffered this "method" and suffered this company.
When I saw this, I thought to myself that this is the best thing and the best approach as it seems not "overwhelm" the modeler with 1) initial expense and 2) a huge box of parts, manuals, plans of which the modeler thinks there is no way I can do this. But, most of the appeal comes in laying down a few bucks as you go along.
I think most of the complaints is the overall raw lack of quality of the partial build approach.
Some steps seem to be out of place or out of order.
Some people that are building this realize that they should have received one particular magazine more in advance realizing that they had to go back and do some modifications. For instance, lets say that the second installment tell you to glue up the Bulwarks and add the Deck and you have all the parts to do so. Then the next installment begins with installation of canons - but wait, if I had known this, I should have made provisions for the port holes in advance because I see that it would have "made it easier" to remove excess wood from the frame pieces. And not only that, the Deck really needs to be out of the way on the stern piece, etc as example.
I am not sure if this helps, but if at all possible, I would be very leery of this company. I have also learned that they have problems with scale and accuracy of the models and most builders have to refer to a lot of research to bring the ship inline.
I am sure as this post matures, you will get alot of replies with pro and cons on it.
I will also add a disclaimer that since I have no personal experience with this DeAgonstini, I would not want to offend anyone here building this companies line of models. I do not want to discourage anyone's heart desire to do what they wish. I would rather take the encouragement approach. I will say that with my Santisima Trinidad build, it was NOT for the faint of heart, it was a rough ride with the rigging as most 80% of the rigging plates were wrong and i had to basically rewrite 100% of all the belaying pin points !!! So, I guess you can say that all kit manufactures will have their short comings. This is why I want to be careful in my judgements.
Donnie
