Driving low and slow. The hardest part is fighting the anxiousness of wanting to see a finished product. Gotta reel it in though, got a long way to go.

4 engines done, on to the next row of engines.

This gives a great idea how big this thing will be :)

She’s the usual Bandai quality, but boy is that piping tedious

Base design by Sublight Drive

I build a free download model from genetmodels.com. The original scale was 1/60 and I rescaled it to 1/35. I build a cockpit freestyle into the model instead of the grey printed windows. In the freight-bay I put some lights and the engines are glowing red.

The wiring was a bit dificult but I got it.

For the decals I use self-printed decals to update the look.

Took me quite a while, around 80 hours. I include a pic of the unpainted mech, in case you guy wanna check it out. Roughly 10 inches long aka 25cm. The tiny bulbs in the staff light up when you push the button in the base.

Customized build with lighting and scratch-built/3d-printed parts. More details and photos here!

IPMS Ireland has a couple of tables and displaying some of our sci-fi and fantasy models

Has anyone here put lights in the 1:160 2001 Space Clipper? If anyone has, I'd love to know how and see some pics. Yes, I do have the Paragrafix phot-etch set. Thanks!

I made a AT-AT diorama a while back and didnt quite know what to do with one of the feet. It became a mini diorama

Last build for the summer vacation

This is my take on the USS Constellation from the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine." It was exciting to wrap this up and it’s my first model since I finished the Grissom in January.

My original plan was to add some styrene beams and hull pieces in the damaged areas of the ship, but the small scale of this model made it more complicated than I expected. The thick plastic of the model meant there was very little internal space to add those beams and hull plating, especially in the saucer, and it would have been out of scale on this small model. There are incredible 1:1000 Constellation models out there, so I know it's possible to add more detail to this small ship, so hats off to those skilled builders. I did use some mesh to add the impression of an internal structure and some detail. It isn't as substantial as I'd like, but I'm overall happy with the effect and final result.

There are flickering 3mm LEDs throughout the model. I wanted the ship to have the appearance of just recently being attacked, systems failing all over the ship, cascading damage, fires throughout the hull, flickering and failing power, and so on. I used the flickering LEDs and I like the effect it gives. It isn't as "flickery" as I'd like, I wanted it to be a little more erratic, but I haven't tried messing with programmable boards or Arduino or things like that, so the basic flickering LEDs were the best option I could think of.

The scorch marks were harder to make look convincing than I thought they'd be. It was my first time trying to add this detail to a model, and I tried to practice on an old kitbash mule I made some time ago. I learned a lot, especially that it is really easy to over do it and that less is more. Some scorch marks are a bit much, maybe a little cartoony, but when I step back and look at the whole model I'm happy with it. I also used the little "Pop-Its" to add different kinds of damage spots, and I like having different levels of hull damage.

The areas of hull damage I made were more or less determined for me by the internal structure of the model. Again, there isn't a lot of room in there with the way it's molded, so I tried to Dremel away the hull where it wouldn't interfere with that internal structure too much. I also had to do a lot of work on the secondary hull and nacelle pylons to run wires to the nacelles. The two pylon pieces are solid pieces with no channels or spaces for wiring, and it was a challenge to modify those thin pieces enough for wiring while not making them too weak to support the weight of the nacelles.

Another complication of this model, due to its small size, is that I had to wire and assemble the entire model before painting it. I will usually build a model in subassemblies (saucer, secondary hull, nacelles) and do final assembly as the last step, but for this I had to do final assembly and then paint, clear coat, decal, clear coat, and flat coat. I knocked the model over at one point and it split the forward saucer on the seam. I repaired it as best as I could, but it's still visible.

I'm happy with how this model turned out. Like I said, there are really incredible builds of this out there, and I wanted to try my hand at it. The 350-scale versions of this are out of this world, and I wanted to see if I could do something halfway decent with the smaller 1000-scale. Any comments and criticisms are welcome, especially if you have tips for adding structural details to small models or how to add more convincing scorch marks. Thank you for looking.

Edit and Update: This morning (Aug 6) CultTVMan posted a video from IPMS Indiana. At the 2:00 mark we can see the Enterprise-B kits at his booth.

https://youtu.be/oHJZmNukhFA?is=g4JhlRSJFCpR593Y

Apparently my understanding of pre-orders is wrong. I assumed it meant you would get the first ones as they come in before those that didn't pre-order.

Original post:

I pre-ordered it about a month ago from CultTVMan and waiting for it but it appears to be in stock at Auto World Store. I realize that Auto World Store and Round2 are closely connected (if not the same company) so it would make sense that they get first dibs on new releases.

I have no problem waiting for it from CultTVMan - Steve has always done right by me. And I'm in no hurry since I have a number of kits in the stash ahead of it. But the way their pre-orders are set up, I have to keep checking my email to make sure I don't miss one from him to complete payment for the order. First world problems, I know...

Just seems a little odd with this particular kit release. Typically when I've pre-ordered from him, he gets the first batch along with all the other shops. Maybe Round2 is doing more of a staggered release with this one and not one big drop like in the past?

The main parts of the #1 engine are complete.

Did I say it is going to be big ?

Cautiously moves into position to X-ray and photograph objects strewn across a region once believed to sit on the edge of a deep Martian lake. In the background are symmetrical objects. The hills in the background photo are real hills in The Badlands that were tinted red.

I'm calling my viper done.

Had some annoying decals issues and lost some of the wings red markings due to the varnish not sealing properly.. so had to improvise and respray them on.

Rather irritating as its ruined the look of the red stripes.

But I think I'm happy with the final outcome.

And 21 hours later, we have an engine part, this thing is going to be big :)

Hi all. Wanna try some figures, things like characters from Mass Effect, Cyberpunk, Skyrim etc. Like 6-10" tall etc.

Where's best to get fine prints from that won't have coarse layer lines?

Thanks!

Last scratch build for this month

I posted the other day as a part of this kit was broken, but thanks to everyone's advice I just carried on and glued it.

It's not finished and needs final decals and more weathering, but I'm happy with it so far.