Fire Your Turbos! It's Viper time!

Of course no Colonial fleet is complete without the turbo charged, built to last, Viper! Another kit from Moebius models this sucker also practically fell together out of the box. Went on a merry hunt for the new Battlestar kits at the Orlando Megacon and this was the only one that turned up. Lucky find n a bottom shelf. When I got it back to the hotel room to check it out, wow I was surprised!

When I first cracked everything open I was actually surprised at how similar it was in parts breakdown to the old Revellogram kit. But that is where the similarities end! Molding quality is top notch and detail is precise and abundant, the thing practically snaps together! Moebius has really gone the extra mile to ensure that THESE are the kits people will be hunting for and building for the next 15-20 years when working on Battlestar subjects.

While not as ingrained into my psyche as the Galactica, I have also held a great love for the classic design of the Viper. It's got the charm and lines of the X-Wing and the raw power and weight of a Saturn V. Really just a brilliantly simple design. And I've also completely loved the later redesigns in the NuBSG (Mk II and Mk VII), they took that sleek power and refined and cleaned it up while also adding in an unmistakable real world design ethic.

 The Viper was built with all the bells and whistles!  The paint job falls somewhere in between studio scale nasty (The studio models looked like they flew through a coal mine) and full size prop pristine. The ship was fully painted in Model Masters and Tamiya Acrylics.

 New dome base allows me to position her in flight poses.

HIT YOUR TURBO! Lights on! When switched on the six LED lights from a cheap flashlight brighten up the room and make this baby look like she's hunting down Raiders! 

I was especially proud of the Paint chipping techniques I used all over the red stripes. There's only one decal on this entire model and it's inside the cockpit!

After spritzing with water, salt is applied to the model which is then painted over and brushed off revealing beautiful weathered stripes. Worked like a dream!

I wasn't thrilled with the pilots face so out came the Dremel! I ground out the face and hollowed out the helmet, then used a 1/35 scale military figure to perform a head transplant. Much better!

Here you can see the display screen lit up by a single LED. It is covered by the kit included decal for the screen.

I tried to give the guns and the end of the engine nozzles a bit different color/weathering to imply the super heating from repeated laser fire/turbo boosts.

Full on view of the rear end! I left the entire back panel removable to service the batteries and lights. Slides right off!

 The starboard aft landing gear cover is removable in order to access the push button switch which controls the lights. I do have to touch up two areas of missing stripe on the underside port/starboard. 

Here goes two generations of Viper. All in all I am super happy with my collection of Vipers from Moebius, they have really outdone themselves by producing tremendous kits from stellar television series. Soon I'll spotlight the modern Vipers I've built, as well as spotlights on the lighting of Galactica, and the modern Battlestar's Galactica and Pegasus. 

  

Fleeing from the Cylon Tyranny...

...The last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest...

Well here it is! I waited a long time for this build to come along. The classic Battlestar Galactica! 

The design of this ship holds a powerful nostalgia for me. I remember in the very early days of my internet exploration finding out about culttvman's website. For me it was a revelation, growing up in Hialeah Florida there were few people that I knew of other than my father and I who were even vaguely interested in science fiction let alone building models of spacecraft.

If there were any people my age doing it they certainly weren't living on my block!

To find that there was some kind of community out there and that they were active and doing new and interesting things provided a powerful boost of self esteem. Then I stumbled upon Starship Modeler, the IDIC page, Phil Broad's website of beautiful behind the scenes photos. To see the things that people were building and working on opened up whole new avenues for which I am eternally grateful. Most importantly it also opened the doors to new worlds of science fiction that I had never been exposed to. That's where the Galactica entered my life.

Of course I had seen Star Wars and Star Trek but when  I stumbled onto the Galactica my mind was blown. I hadn't even seen the series, but this ship was unbelievable! The Vipers, the Raiders, the shuttle. Everything mystified me. But the Galactica remained just about the coolest thing I had ever seen. When I got to high school I began attempts to scratchbuild Galactica with less than stellar results (though it still looked better than the monogram kit, which I could not afford) This early scratchbuild still survives although it has been thrashed bashed and unfinished for ten years now. I just don't have the heart to mothball it.

My old Galactica.

 Vastly unfinished.

 My first foray into major scratchbuilding.

I cant begin to fathom building one of these at 72 inches long with all those original donor kits...

Finally my big Galactica fix was satiated in 2004 when NuBSG arrived. For the record I love and adore NuBSG. It is my second favorite television show of all time only by virtue of Star Trek: TOS having captured my imagination at a much younger age. I thought it was a great series and still do, and it did something else, it brought Galactica back into the mainstream! Without it, I highly doubt Moebius models would have released their fantastic classic Galactica kits. So without derailing the post too much for the NuBSG detractors I present my Classic Galactica build!

Moebius has consistently surprised me with their fantastic kits, high on detail, easy to construct and just plain fun to build. The Galactica was no different.

 They really left nothing out! Oh I'm sure anyone can nitpick things, but compared to the days of old (science fiction modeling) this kit is light years beyond my wildest dreams! 

 Adding in the Paragrafix detail set only refined and perfected an already PERFECT kit. This thing is truly a work of art.

 The ship practically falls together out of the box.

Being part of a detail obsessive modeling community I couldnt help but just tweak some things here and there to make this kit really shine! Some small fiddly bits of detail were added here and there to help the ship really pop.

 Recessed areas over the main engines were drilled and hollowed out, to give a greater sense of depth. 

The biggest change I made to the kit was to scratchbuild the eyebrows over the equipment bays on the head. Again, just to give a bit more depth and to more accurately reflect the filming miniatures original parts. 

You may notice that underneath the ship is something a little more than a standard brass tube for mounting. That's right it's a coaxial connector!

BECAUSE THIS BABY LIGHTS UP!!!

LOTS MORE TO COME IN PART TWO!!!

Lighting the Galactica!

...For a shining planet, known as Earth!