W.I.P. - Moebius 1/32 BSG Colonial Viper MKII

[TRM]

Looking sweet!!! keep it going!! ;D

 

[trekriffic]

Isn't ParaGrafix the BEST! I love working with Paul's photoetch. You are doing yoeman's work with this!

8)

 

[panzerace007]

SPLASH,

WoW ! Keep Rockin' . That Cockpit is Off-th-Chain !! Canopy is stellar !

 

[ModelMakerMike]

It's looking Frakkin' awesome!

 

[Grendels]

The photo etch does liven it up quite a bit, and is one of the reason I haven't started on mine. (Not to mention other projects have caught my eye....)

The photo etch is pretty easy. The cockpit is simple, the engine exhausts are a bit harder, and the side panels are kind of fiddly. When you remove the side detail I suggest cutting straight through the fuselage, cutting out the plastic with a Dremell tool, filing the hole smooth, then backing the hole with some plastic card. You don't have to be quite so precise with the plastic backing and you'll never notice that the photo etch isn't prefectly fitted into the hole.

Thank you Sir!

This is a fun build to watch, so keep us posted!

 

[Quaralane]

Looking great

 

[Splashcoat]

Primed.

 

[JohnSimmons]

Looking great! That canopy frame is tight!!

 

[Quaralane]

Looking very sharp here.
Time for paint, I'm thinking

 

[Jamaicanmodels69]

Awesome and i love your little saw horses you
made out of the cloths hangers!! ;D

 

[Splashcoat]

Awesome and i love your little saw horses you
made out of the cloths hangers!! ;D

LOL. I need those things; I have a nasty habit of gluing things to my bench if I don't support them with something... or at the very least I'll rub a nice, pristine paint job around in some old sanding dust :

 

[Splashcoat]

Pre-Shading.

 

[ModelMakerMike]

Cool!
In your opinion, is this a fun kit to build?

 

[TRM]

Nice .....no come some of the fun stuff....PAINT!! ;D

 

[Splashcoat]

Cool!
In your opinion, is this a fun kit to build?

This kit was a lot of fun to build; the kit is very nicely engineered and the parts fit is generally good. The PE adds a bit of extra work - there’s a great deal of fiddly surgery needed to fit the PE details but, hey, that’s part of the fun right? An OOB build of this kit would be very fast and easy if you could live with some of the inaccuracies. My biggest gripe would be with the RCS thrusters. In my opinion, the decals aren’t realistic enough and the thruster ports must be drilled out. It would have helped if Moebius had molded location holes to be drilled out â€" much like other manufacturers do when kitting subjects that have different variants with different location holes.

If you’re thinking of building this kit, here’s a word to the wise… If you’re planning on using the landing gear, fit them before you assemble the fuselage (as per the instruction sequence). I always attach landing gear and other small, fragile pieces last and in this instance I discovered that the landing gear do not fit easily through the landing gear well openings. You can squeeze them in but it would have been much easier to fit them from inside.

 

[ModelMakerMike]

Thanx Splashcoat,
I haven't opened mine yet.
In my opinion it is totally lame for the manufacturer to cheap out on details, and just supply decals to make up for it.

 

[Igard]

Just catching up with this build, and Wow! That cockpit is amazing. Really nice work here! Looking forward to seeing what you do with the paint.

 

[Splashcoat]

Thanks, everyone, of the kind words and encouragement.

@ModelMakerMike: I couldn't agree more. It's kind of puzzling how a well researched and generally highly accurate and detailed kit is missing such an important and highly visual detail. Moebius went to the trouble of researching and including details to allow this kit to be built to represent the CG or practical versions of the Viper; and even included extra decals for markings which could be applied over the red "go faster" stripes if the builder painted on the stripes rather than using the decal stripes with markings printed on. Yet they skipped the RCS ports completely. Locating the RCS ports using the decals as templates wasn't the hardest job I've ever done but it could have been made much easier with some locating holes molded inside the kit parts. I suppose it only got under my skin because the rest of the kit is well done and its instructions are painstakingly detailed... makes you wonder if the person in charge of that aspect of the kit's design phoned it in that day

 

[Splashcoat]

White colour coat.

 

[Igard]

Really nice shading there!