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With the X-Wing on hold for a few weeks I figured I'd delve into the stash and come out with something from MPC. I debated doing the AT-AT or the AT-ST but then my eyes fell on this beauty. Golden Opportunity kit indeed! :wub: I will make it with the wings unfolded and with no lighting I believe, at least not the engines.

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This is their best kit out of all they did from what I've seen, only being let down by the raised panel lines which I've now set out to remove on all parts and rescribe. It's a lot of area to cover but the lines aren't that many and most pieces are flat, so it's almost enjoyable :cheers:

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Edited by Sir Fondlebottom
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Thanks! Yeah Fine Molds should've come out with way more stuff. I can't really see how they didn't sell those kits as fast as they were able to churn them out. Heck even the very pricey 1/72 Falcon sold out quickly every time it came into stock as far as I saw.

I've terminated the raised panel lines. Some are still a bit scruffy but I'll get back to those once the kit is more built and there's primer on so I can see every niggle more clearly.

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It's building up larger than anticipated, I'm reconsidering the in-flight config and may build it landed hm.

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The "trenches" between the large wing halves are devoid of detail, I'll have to scratch this. All the grilles on the ship are pretty lackluster too, I'll look at scratching them, especially the one in the very front of the ship on the cockpit.

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Thanks Els! I'm still very much a novice scriber though, it's just that this is really flat and nice to scribe on. Those curved parts around the main fuselage gave me hell. My major breakthrough I think was when I bought a proper scribe tool, that being the Tamiya one and the Hasegawa one visible in some of the pictures. The Tamiya will do it very well and easily while the Hasegawa one is harder to handle.

The Hasegawa is much better at getting into harder to reach corners and will do very fine lines much better where the Tamiya one is just too bulky to fit and tend to do a bit heavier lines. The ones I'm doing on this kit are pretty trenchlike in depth since that's what they look like on my references, I still dread scribing a proper airplane fuselage where everything is delicate, curved and wraparound :wacko:

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I built one many years ago - I filled the wing trenches with guitar wire and intermittent tubing - pretty closely matched the box photo (which is a nice reference in itself). I also replaced the guns with metal tubing. It's surprisingly large if you display it with the wings down - and if you make them moveable - be careful with the area between the two pivots - it'll want to separate on you. Still, not a bad kit considering its age. Here's a picture of mine with some amateur photoshopping.

Hitch

ShuttleTydirium1.jpg

Edited by GEH737
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Nice! Yeah I consider this MPCs best effort by now, having seen how little correction is actually needed not counting that everything is raised due to the age of the kit. I kiiiind of want to make an extended universe paintjob on this looking at those large beautiful surfaces, it's be awesome in a Czerka Corporation or Aratech paintscheme, but I'll probably stick with the movie look.

Wasteland 2 has really slowed down my progress but I managed to get some stuff done this weekend.

That panel line was horribly crooked I noticed, I swear I traced the leftovers from the raised lines, yet I don't think a crooked line in such a prominent area would be there, so it was probably my goof.

Puttied n' fix'd.

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Front grille was less than adequate so I went to the trusty plastic sheets and made my own, adding the correct layout and steps and making it flush with the front as it should be. Original piece on the left, it was meant to be placed a bit back so the grille would be recessed in the "mouth".

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Added a quick and dirty paint job, I plan on darkening the canopy considerably so I just did the cockpit in shades of gray and picked out the buttons in bright white, so it *may* show through the canopy in the end.

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A bit of cleanup to go and then on to the wing trenches. :cheers:/>

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  • 2 weeks later...

More progress: Added some more dabs of paint to the cockpit.

shuttle11.png

I will have to sand the cockpit glass to about half thickness to match the movie model where it's not flush with the surrounding frame. With such dark colors inside it looks pretty nicely when seen straight on but when seen from the side where there's no dark color behind it, it's too transparent, so I still plan on darkening the transparency a bit on the inside.

Sorry about the rotations and stuff on these but taking photographs were a pain when not bothering to properly set up the shoot :D

Been adding detail to the main trench, this is the center wing. Rotating the photos around a bit so added arrow to clarify which piece it is.

Proper references actually showing the trench have been very scarce, so I matched what I could and tried to match the style somewhat on the rest where I had no refs. Back is still lacking a few pieces and I ran out of 0.5mm rod. Mostly styrene sheets, the few kit parts are the gray pieces. Front grille courtesy of the butt-ugly ammo belt from a 1/32 Hasegawa P-51D

Lower front:

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Upper front:

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Top:

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Back:

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Edited by Sir Fondlebottom
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Thanks! :) I'm out of tubing and don't feel like I can manage to stretch enough sprue consistently to continue on the wings yet. I'm currently building on the areas around the guns, they were a bit incorrect and I think the large circley thingies at the base of the guns are simply too large. I'm currently scratching some of the stuff around it with plasticard to make some kind of happy medium between the kit and the reference.

I also replaced the guns with stainless steel tubing, which was a pain since I wasn't able to cleanly cut them with a razor blade as I usually do. In the end I found paint scraper blades made of tungsten carbide that managed to eat into the stainless steel cleanly. Kind of like this http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hyde-2-in-Wide-2-Scraping-Edges-Scraper-Blade-Tungsten-Carbide-10620/100145658

Note to self: Buy the usual brass/copper/aluminium tubing next time and not the stainless steel <_<

Pics to follow in a day or two when I have more to show!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been lazy, but here goes! Since I'm going for middle ground between what's on the kit wings and what's on reference I'm reshaping the area around the cannon a bit. Styrene sheet later filled with putty.

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Forgot to photograph, pretty much went for it in one sitting, here it is without cleanup and still some building to do, putty still drying in some places.

Front:

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Top:

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Backside:

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Cannons temp fitted to give an idea:

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Ref:

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They are only able to go on one side properly as they aren't mirrored. Both are exactly the same while the matching holes in the wings are mirrored. Had to cut away some excess plastic on one of them to make them fit with correct orientation on one wing.

...and yes I mounted them upside down for the photo :beer4:

Cleanup and some missing details to go as well as more accurizing.

Edited by Sir Fondlebottom
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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks! I've been slacky with updates, closing the fuselage sides was a real pain, ended up being a proper glue bomb with many clamps before it would close properly. I was originally gonna doing wings folded down but the space I was going to have it in has since been earmarked for a studio scale TIE Fighter I managed to lay my paws on :whistle:

So it's going to be landed instead, wings up, which is nice too, because it looks interesting with the cannons

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Test fitting the head and front showed a number of glaring problems:

1. The head is too close to the fuselage

2. The head is too far up (those pipe greeblies are flush with the topside of the fuselage as you can see, while it should be going under)

3. The front fuselage wall is too far seated into the fuselage

4. The fuselage thickness is too thick

5. The head is seemingly correctly tilted if you're comparing to the movie fullsize set piece, but is too much tilted if comparing to the ILM filming model

I'm fine with number 5 but will correct the others to varying degrees

I installed 4mm spacers to get the fuselage front wall further out, this in turned solved issue number 1 as well, moving the head forward. I was originally planning on extending the neck, but it seems pretty okay now. I also sanded the thickness down near the front, to about half.

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I still need to move the head down and fill the gap created in doing so. Forgot to add the head in for the photo.

Moving around to the backside, I cut out the engine holes. This leaves two large empty holes which, beside armature and lighting, was all that was on the original model as well I assume.

Finding no extended universe stuff that shows the engines off I chose to go with building random stuff to make up the engine wells. I also added two styrene rods that mimic the fluorescent lights in the original model, just for the hell of it :woot.gif:

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Here it is with the back panel dry fitted, I need to paint it before I close it up properly. Everything will be a very dark gray except the two rods which will be something like white with a slight blue tint.

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Edited by Sir Fondlebottom
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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks all! :)

I've been very distracted by another project (read: I've been lazy) which I'll post about here momentarily. I've had some progress on the shuttle, mostly that engine bay paint and some cleanup, going through my camera I must've dreamt I was taking pictures of it, so that will come tomorrow.

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  • 1 month later...

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