When I heard that the Sci-Fi channel (now SyFy) was doing a remake of the old Battlestar Galactica series, I couldn’t stop laughing. I was 7 or 8 years old when the original came out, and even at that age I knew it was cheesy! The new series kicked off with a mini-series that happened to coincide with the end of a bad week at work for me, so I sat down with a beer or two and tuned in so that I could have a laugh. After the first few minutes it was obvious this wasn’t the old school cheese of my childhood, and I was hooked.
Like the rest of the hardware in Battlestar, the Cylon Raider was updated. The Fantastic Plastic kit captures the new sweeping curves and slender lines of the fighter. I initially put this kit aside for a while, as that’s what I generally do out of habit, and also because I had notions of lighting the “eye” and the engines of the model. Finally, I decided to just build it, as it’s a simple kit and I needed a break from a 16 month long ironclad build.
Paints Used
* Mr. Surfacer primer
* Vallejo Black 859 for Alcad undercoat
* Vallejo Black-Gray 862 for guns, exhausts, staining
* Tamiya Smoke for effects
* Alclad Chrome Silver, Gun Metal and Chrome applied in layers for overall body colors
There were issues with the kit. The lower engine shrouds didn’t fit well, so out came the files and the Aves putty. The head is a bit misshapen when looked at from directly forward; short of re-sculpting a new one there wasn’t much I could do about that, so I left it. The kit-supplied guns were distorted, so I replaced them with telescoping brass rod. I think I mounted the guns in reverse order, the big ones should be on the top, the little ones on the bottom. A mistake I can live with, and, besides, it looks more symmetrical this way.
I used a lot of Alclad paint on this. A base coat of Airframe Aluminum, and then I went at it with an airbrush and Chrome and Burnt Metal, freehand, misting it in following the contours until I liked the result. Decals came with the model, but I didn’t use any of them as I liked the clean look without.
Overall a successful project and a lot of fun. This model took a Third Place at JerseyCon in 2009, and has since been sold to a collector
~October 2010
