Richard Baker

I have been building kits of all kinds for decades, now I am a proud father showing my son what I have learned. I had no one to teach me and with an eager 13 year old looking at what I have done it is great to have someone to share with. This is his third glue kit. He was given it for a Christmas present a while back and it sat in the closet since. When his Mom and I got married, he wanted to build models like I have done and so we started off with simple kits and have worked ourselves up. I have a 'realm' downstairs where I keep all my personal stuff, we worked down there and while building I had the movie 'Battleship' playing in the background for inspiration. It has some excellent BluRay features so we watched the walk through featurette as well. My Son's USS Arizona is now complete. It may not be 100% accurate to the actual vessel and it's markings, but for me the important thing is that he enjoyed himself while learning how to expand on his skills. The wire rigging is an approximation- he wanted it as a final touch and the references were a bit contradictory so we went for a look and feel of it. We may revisit this kit later and add hull decals and the flags, but this project has taken forever and he wanted to get it finished so we could move on the the next one. http://i.imgur.com/ciHPmlP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Dfi4trC.jpg http://i.imgur.com/KCQZ3AD.jpg The great thing is that he has a lot more confidence in himself as he works on these kits- this was his third glue kit and I remember how terrified he was on his first one, so afraid he would make a mistake. AS to accuracy, he is 13 and if he wants to paint something green it is up to him. As he progresses he can decide if he wants to be accurate and to what degree, as long as he is having fun that is fine with me.

I got a very small package- the 1:1000 Botany Bay from the two kit special edition. A friend online (larskseme on Hobby Talk) sent it to me free of charge- his only request is to show the weathering technique on it as I build it. This will be my first documented build since my very first scratch build in the mid seventies. The kit itself is pretty simple and rather plain, I am going to enhance surface details somewhat with micro chips of styrene and rod I think. The kit is molded in a weird burnt orange-rust color. according to the instructions is is supposed to be a base color but every image I have seen of that ship shows in it in grays. One great thing is that all the added detail will show clearly when I photograph it.

It would make a lovely hat- or Halloween costume... That is an awesome size to work with- looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

I really like that alternative paint scheme! Here is where Bandai's approach to kit design bites them back. Instead of just making a new decal sheet they now have to retool the entire kit so it can be assembled from precolored plastic.

For clarity I would suggest you contact Paul at ParaGrafix directly. What I know about it is in the link I posted upthread, I do not have any interest in the NuE kit so I never explored the photoetch options. I do know Paul is an individual who would not make this sort of assertion lightly. Unfortunately due to the way SSM discards old/inactive threads there is now way to go back a couple of years and read the original discussion he was referring to. Before I buy anything else I will take a closer look at the item, comparing it myself to other offerings. I am not the one making the accusation about recasting, I am just mentioning that GS was accused of it and that is something I do not take lightly.

It is a cargo version of the walker- supposed to be larger than the classic AT-AT Views of the Revell Star Destroyer- (Don't let the U-Wing image fool you, click on the image links below it) http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXGHPA&P=ML I am assuming the flip out hull sections are just some sort of display ability. Better than Ertl, but IMO they got a lot of the proportions wrong.

My son, who is thirteen, turned down Revell's TFA kits when he saw then- he wants Bandai versions... I couldn't be prouder

Views of the U-Wing and cargo Walker on Target- http://intl.target.com/p/star-wars-snaptite-build-and-play-rebel-u-wing-fighter/-/A-51128377 http://intl.target.com/p/star-wars-snaptite-build-and-play-imperial-at-act-cargo-walker/-/A-51128376

Paul did not state Green Strawberry copied everything from him- he just knew some of his Trek stuff was copied directly to the point of details he made up when there were no screen accurate references and the way some parts were nested into others. It could be that several years ago when this was a hot topic (which I missed) GS did take some shortcuts like that- the people who did it may not even work for that company anymore. It just gives me a bad feeling when a company gets into the area of recasting- I have had my own stuff stolen a couple of times and so things like this bother me some. Still, GS did some great work on the set I bought and it was delivered pretty fast considering I am in the middle of nowhere Alabama and they are in the Czech Republic

You make a good point.

Apparently it broke on Starship Modeler several years ago when Green Strawberry was first getting started. I visit that forum daily but missed that story for some reason. I don't recall anything about GS until about three months ago and they looked pretty good for the price so I placed an order. In a discussion on Hobbytalk last month about photoetch parts for the Revell NuEnterprise kit the whole GS thing came up again. I had already gotten my parts by then and really hated to hear about what they had done with ParaGraphix's designs. I asked for some more details and got enough to satisfy me- Paul didn't want to get into what he considered old news but he ahs a solid reputation and would not make any comment unless he was 100% certain. Here is the HT Thread: http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/99-science-fiction-modeling/533546-has-anyone-found-simple-pre-made-solution-jjprise-bussard-blades.html SSM purges their older threads so there is no reference to the original discussion.

I din't care much for the first Aftermath book- it was not written very well IMO and could have told the same story in half as many pages. It did have some great scenes though and I really liked 'Mr. Bones'.

Revell has a Rogue One ATAT, U-Wing and Star Destroyer kit in the works. Revell did a pretty good job with the Venator, I guess their new kit will do until Bandai gets off the stick and releases a larger scale ISD of their own... http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=266227

That is great news! I wondre if this could be considered confirmation that the Bandai Mecha Colle mini-kit is a true 1:144 scale? It had appeared so, but the mini kit line has always been a box scale so no ships would be expected to be any specific scale

Bandai did release a series of Star Trek kits which were prepainted and that was years ago when their technology was not as advanced. I could see them producing a good figure kit which would still be easy to assemble without requiring find detail painting.

Sadly I have learned that Green Strawberry has been lifting photoetch fret work from ParaGrafix- in short they are recasters (re-etchers?). This came up in a discussion on another forum and Paul listed several examples, from nesting to having details he had to invent since there was no specific reference and they were copied directly. I do not support recasters and so will never order from this company again.

Today I received some excellent photoetch grills for my Bandai 1/144 Falcon. Still not too sure how far I will take this particular build but the exposed vent fans in the rear deck demanded some grill covers. GreenStrawberry is a great source I had heard about for a while, this is my first order from them. I got this order in nine days, which is astounding since they are located in the Czech Republic.

There is a nice resin kit in the Starship Modeler store but it is currently out of stock https://starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/2797_40/172-clone-wars-y-wing.html I think though if you want to do a diorama of a Y-Wing being stripped you could make some custom hull panels based on the design concept then leave a couple on scattered about (so you don't have to worry about everything fitting perfectly) and have a pile of pieces already removed stacked up behind it. I have been thinking about doing something like that with my FineMolds Y-Wing- a kit I really liked unto the Bandai one was released.

A Y-Wing with it's outer shell would be great, and in keeping with the prequel nature of the film. I would even settle for one in a hangar background shot- extra points if you have a cussing technician pulling some of the outer hull away and tossing it on the floor!

I like the U-Wing better now that the wings do something...

Who knows what Revell paid for the tooling or if they just might be getting greedy... I always wanted one of the FineMolds kits but considering what Bandai has shown with their 1:144 version I think I will wait for theirs to come out eventually. Until then I have enough to keep me busy for a while :-)

They scaled the Nu-E up to be as big as the Galaxy class (in the prime universe)- a 1:350 kit would fill a room. A 1:1000 scale model would be a good and practical size and match the common scale used by Round-2.

Moebius does not have the license to produce anything from 2010 so the Leonov won't be happening anytime soon. Discovery, Aries 1b, Space Pod and Space Station 5 I really want. I have the giant Space Pod from Atomic City and I can just imagine what the Moebius edition could be like. Because the Atomic City kit was so wonderful I have their 16" Aries kit on order, just waiting for mine to be cast and shipped. I saw 2001 on first release in Cinerama many many years ago and it is still one of my favorite movies to this day.

A lot depends on the subject and how far they want to take it. The NuBSG Raptor has a complete interior which make it like creating two kits. I could see the Discovery going a much cheaper route with folded printed cardboard like Moebius used on the 1:128 kits and leaving the more complete interiors to aftermarket. Starships should be much easier to master, hopefully they will have some wallpaper decals instead of a paint guide for all that aztecing...

I wonder if I could just buy the new wings?- already have the rest. The NuTrek license is great news- don't like the Enterprise but I would love to have kits of the rest of the ships.