Monday, August 20, 2012

Lindberg Interplanetary UFO


Lindberg's "Interplanetary UFO" model.  I believe the decals used to be for the "USS Leif Ericson" but now it's the "USS Yuri Gagarin".  Which is okay with me.  The model came in greenish glow-in-the-dark plastic and I was tempted to leave it that way, but the fit wasn't good and I had to do some advanced filing, filling, sanding, and screaming to erase the seams, and that ruined the glow-in-the-dark effect.  So I painted it Fifties-style, all bare metal.  I also plugged the see-through engine nacelles with plastic bulkheads and glued science-fictiony doodads to the bulkheads (domes from an AMT Romulan Warbird on the front, and sprockets from an M113 to the backs to simulate "plasma thrusters" or something).  The paint is highly generic hardware store silver spray paint that I bought to cover up welds on fence panels - it works for models too, but MAN it goes on heavy.  Maybe that's a good thing.



The decals weren't bad.  A little fragile, but workable.  I sanded the raised windows off, knowing that I'd be using the window decals anyway.


A view of the shuttlecraft bay.  The decal sheet includes decals that simulate machinery on the shuttle bay bulkheads, which was nice of them, because the kit parts had scribbly engraving and looked troublesome to paint.  I scratchbuilt new shuttle bay doors out of sheet styrene and bits and pieces of Evergreen strip styrene, as the kit doors lent new emphasis to the term "clunky".

I still have some work to do.  The green paint on one of the engine domes is horribly smeared, and the model needs to be cleaned and overcoated, but by and large, it's pretty much done.  The one-sentence summary:  fun, but stock up on clamps and sandpaper before you start.

Airfix Roland



This is the venerable Airfix 1/72nd scale Roland CII "Walfisch", which must be one of the easiest biplane models to build (no cabane struts!).  I'd been feeling stuck in the middle of too many difficult projects and thought I'd just "do some Airfix", to quote James May.  The Roland isn't a great kit - no interior, and the machine guns are at best vague approximations of armament - but it isn't bad.  The pilot and gunner figures are a little odd-shaped but not bad, and the fit is generally pretty good.  And the decals are quite well-behaved.  I built it over the span of a weekend, a task eased by the fact that I could brush-paint it with Model Master acrylic RLM65 and not have to worry about much else.

Another notch in my "Aeroplanes of the Great War" collection.  Notable gaps are now things like the Gotha, the Handley-Page 0/400, the DH4, and Spads.  I have no Spads.  Why is that?  Poor planning on my part, probably.