This is the 1/48th scale Fine Molds model. The molding and fit of the kit are excellent. It's actually a snap and screw together kit, but I ended up gluing everything. The only issue I ran into was that I, as a general rule, will assemble parts a half-dozen times to test fit before I apply glue, and with the tight tolerances in this model, I broke a few joints during the process. Nothing that glue wouldn't fix, though. I did need to clamp the upper and lower fuselage together to get rid of a minimum gap, but otherwise the fit was perfect.
The model is pretty much out of the box, with the exception of the cockpit, the markings, and the droid. In the cockpit I added bits of spare photo etch from 1/350th scale ship kits in a few places to dress up smooth boxes and surfaces, and I also made some conduit hoses out of guitar string. Simple enough, but it made a huge difference in the look. The droid head is an R5 from an after-market set that's long out of production. It's not entirely correct in that the head should be a trapezoid at the very top and blend down to the circular bottom, but I didn't want to modify such a nice looking detail. Since it wasn't completely correct, I painted the R5's eye copper, just because I love that color and so rarely have a chance to use it.
There are photos of the actor who played John Brannon on the internet, and I used those to do some minimal helmet markings. The red color and the white stripe wasn't difficult, but the scalloped detail on the front was too much to handle, so a single black dot made due, and I drew in the arrow shapes on the side of the helmet with a Sharpie.
The kit comes with markings for Skywalker's "Red-5", both in water transfer decals and regular peel-and-stick stickers for the kids, but the only decals I used were for the instrument panel in the cockpit; everything else is masked and airbrushed. I didn't want to do "Red 5", Luke Skywalker's ship, as you can't swing a wombat without hitting one of those things. |