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Here's another bits box product from the Lincolnshire Starship Yards. I've swapped over to the Star wars universe for this one. The Empire covers a large area. There are numerous worlds and moons, all of which require supplies in order that the people can exist and perhaps produce items or basic materials that can be used in payment for those supplies. They need an intergalactic Amazon Van. And here it is. The Vaurbians seem to have died out/vanished years ago. Mostly, just these ships remain. They are controlled by an A.I. which is in a sealed compartment in the ship. (I admit I borrowed this idea from Anne McCaffreys' 'Ship that sang' books. But, It may be a Vaurbian in there. No one knows. The main thing is, the ships are ancient but keep working. There is usually a small crew of droids or humans for basic maintenance and internal cargo movement. I like the idea that the humans are rather like old time Canal boat people and may be family units, with their children perhaps joining other ships as they mature. Though with FTL drive and associated time lapse they may never meet again! The ship is atmosphere capable and around 400 feet in length. The basic shape was a 1/48th F-18. I simply added bits and pieces here and there and faired them in with filler where necessary. The forward end of the ship is to your left. The green drive unit at the other end. The drive unit is obviously FTL capable and has been known to pull in any attacking ships. Only to abandon them in another time and place, never to be seen again. Hence the lack of armament. A view down the spine towards the nose. The odd shaped 'shields' were Airfix Railway Cement wagon parts. They reminded me of the panels on a Tie Fighter though. The round (main) sensors on the nose. There is no 'bridge' as such as the A.I. can see all, and it always knows where and when (FTL time lapse seems to be mostly ignored in the films) it is. On the belly the main landing gear doors (with lousy scribing!) can be seen. The brown round thing is the cargo bay access. It extends down to ground level. It would be about 7 meters in Diameter The cargo bay is in the middle of the ship and would be about 80 meters long. A useful amount of space. Under the nose, And so, under the tail too. Rear side view. Here we see a 1/76th truck wheel in a Gazelle Tail Rotor housing. Also a TSR2 bit and ships crane & lifeboat. And that is your lot until the next build. Any questions or offers to develop the idea for Disney are always welcome. I know the paint finish and some of the scribing is a bit'iffy', but it was a fun build and will live in the mancave forever. Thanks for dropping by, Pete

A question for the number crunchers out there.... I plan to build a section of the maintenance trench that runs down the side of Star Destroyers. A sort of vertical diorama. It will be mounted on a redundant 22" x 34" magnetic notice board so it may take a while. It won't be an exact copy, but very much in the spirit of, with lots of greeblies using whatever the spares boxes yield up. But I do want to get the size about right in 1/350th scale. So, The question is, How deep/tall should it be? Does anyone out there have a Star Destroyer in whatever scale that they can measure and then convert the numbers to suit? Thanks, Pete

Hi all, I am going to try and add lighting to both these kits, as they are both destined for another diorama project.

And the news for us Star Wars fans just keeps getting better and better! Now AMT is bringing out a 1/72nd scale Razor Quest from the Mandalorian TV show. No more word about it than this placard on display at WonderFest this weekend. So, Revell has already announced they're doing one in 1/72nd as well. And there's also the Bandai one - but that looks a very small kit from the imagery thus far. Is AMT's a reboxing of Revell's? Is Revell's just for the European market as was their Republic Gunship? In any event, a 1/72nd Razor Crest is hella cool! https://www.scalemates.com/kits/amt-razor-crest--1355671

Well, it's been a few years since Donald came into being from the JPG resin Gonk kit, and that's far too long to go without any Gonk action, so I've spent the last couple of weeks designing a 3D model in fusion 360. I've also been waiting for some warmer weather so I can get printing again, and since summer seems to have finally arrived, I fired up the Mars at the weekend and started Gonking around. The design I've drawn up is loosely based on the Gonk you see in the Sandcrawler in ANH, which is also similar to the one that's guesting in Bad Batch at the moment. Actually, the main reference I've been using is the old Kenner 3¾ action figure, which can be seen below. I've taken the dimesions for the 3D model from that action figure, but scaled up 1.6 times, which seemed like it would give me something that would roughly equate to 1/12 to fit in with my Bandai droids. Although I'll be printing out the main components, some of the smaller details will be scratch built as I still want to get some traditional modelling into the project. I started off with the feet which are modelled pretty closely on those from the action figure, but I scaled them up sightly less that I did with the rest of the figure, because at 1.6 times they looked too big compared to the body. The print lines on these weren't too bad, but I gave them a good wet sanding to smooth them out. There are still a few tiny traces of texture around the corners of the raised squares on the top, but they should look fine once I've got some primer on. The holes for the legs go right through the foot, and I'll be scratch building the legs using some styrene tube for the main structure with some wire or something similar wrapped around to create the corrugated effect. The ends of the tubes will then slot into the holes in the feet. I may add some more detailing to the feet with styrene or spare photo etch depending on whether I find something suitable. The feet are modelled hollow, which can be seen from the underside. They're done with 1mm think walls, and I added the framework to give them some rigidity. I might back fill the cavities with some lead shot to give them some extra weight and make the model a bit more stable. I was fairly happy with the way the feet turned out, so I moved on to the lower body. This too printed out pretty well, although the inset channels down each side will need some additional sanding to better smooth them out. It's sitting upside down as you're looking at it here, and the square cutout in the middle is where the legs will attach, although I'm still figuring out exactly how I'm going to mount them. The four holes are there simply to reduce suction on the FEP film when the final layers were printing and also to slightly reduce the amount of resin used. They don't make much difference on that score, but every bit counts I suppose. There should be a panel line running around the lower edge of the body, and I did add one to the 3D model, but I saved two STL files, one with and one without the line, then accidentally printed the wrong one. Since the print took 8 hours, I couldn't be bother to do it again, so the panel line will have to wait for the next Gonk I do. Again, like the feet, I designed the body hollow with 1mm walls, and added an internal framework to keep it all square while printing. The top edge and the frames look a little messy here, but that's just where the print supports have been removed. All that will be hidden when the lower body is clipped into the waist band part. The remainder of the main parts have been printed now, but I'll leave those for the next update. And, as usual with my droid builds, I'm open to possible names. Anyone who's followed any of the old builds before will know the form those names tend to take (not that I condone such flagrant ridicule of political figures, of course) GONK

Hello Mates, few years ago we from IPMS Austria planned a Special "40 Years of SW" for our Exhibition in March 2017. So i cannot shut up as always and so it begins........i want to built the Jango and Boba Fett Slave 1's. A long searching for the Finemolds kits long out of production, and as always its going bigger, in this case more then planned. I can get 4 Slaves for a real good price, but only one is the Boba version. And so the Desaster is going on, changed my plan to show 2 of them in Flightmodus and the others in landingposition on Kamino and Bespin.To get another Boba Fett version a bit of casting parts and cut down the kitparts followed. But then, also as always, way too late, i begin with glueing and sanding, rescribing and painting.And lights everywhere with Lightfibres and LEDs. I use prefabricated LEDs for 12V . So here we go.... For the 2 Machines in landed Position i build a Interior from Scratch, with Plasticard, Parts os a Uboat, some Plugletters forgrooved Boards and a lot of Imagination and Fantasy..... For the Thruster i go another way then most modellers, most of them cast this in clear resin. But i dont like the Look so i go the complicated way with halfround tube, semiopaque Plasticard , a bit of orange clear Tube and filler....painting is done with Tamiya, Gunze and Revell Acrylics And i build a Rocketlauncher as seen in SW 2 " Attack of the Clones"

Hi all, I am calling this done, not quite got it across the line for the May 4th Star Wars day, mainly due to shipping delays getting the last of my 1/144 Stormtroopers from Shapeways. I have 76 Stormtroopers in total in this hanger bay, 40 of them together with Darth Vader came last Saturday morning, thanks to Keith at Cozmic Scale models. The other 36 had a different pose and Shapeways had those. Anyway I got them on Tuesday afternoon. Darth Vader seems to have almost disappeared amongst the black flooring and lighting, but I have tried to show him best I can. I have continued the tradition of ILM by placing characters from other movies that they had worked on into the build. In the mother ship from Close Encounters they added an R2D2 on the edge of the ship just for fun. So, can you spot the Star Wars character from a later movie? I have placed it in the unlit photos to make it easier. I intend to display both this hanger bay and my recently completed Imperial Shuttle Bay together in a bookcase unit. Thanks for all the great comments and may the Force be with you always! Mystery Character Update Hi all, first of all thank you so much for all the wonderful comments on this build, it's very much appreciated. Just goes to show what you can do with a few old kits and a bit of imagination. Congrats to those of you that found BB8, yes it was staring at you in the face all the time! BB8 was in the Bandai Force Awakens Millennium Falcon kit and it sparked my memory for what ILM had done with the Close Encounters mothership. Let's see if I can hide another character in the next build. Bye for now, and may the Force be with you!

So, my second build of Finemold's 1/72 Slave 1 is now finished. This kit is actually the Jango Fett version but I've painted it here in the original Boba Fett colours. The two kits are essentialy the same anyway, with just a few detail differences between the two. I made a few modifications to the kit to bring this one closer to Boba's ship, and also incorporated some of the details that have shown up in the ship's appearence in the Mandalorian. This build turned out a little more accurate than my old one, mainly because I paid closer attention to matching more of the subtle but distinctive paint and weathering aspects of the studio model. I can't imagine that I'll be doing one of these again any time soon, unless someone sees fit to re-release the kit, so it's been fun to get the chance to revisit the kit which I originally built back in 2014. The full build can be found here And finally, the old and new ones parked side by side. 2021 on the left, 2014 on the right Thanks for looking Andy

Due to illness (and the cold in the manshed) I've been quiet on the build front for a while. However, today, plastic seems to have been manhandled (ooer) and the smell of Tamiya extra thin has wafted about. This one has been nagging away in my brain for a couple of months now, and today I had an opportunity to do something about it. I'd gotten a couple of 'spares or repair' F-18's from the bay for less than a tenner. One Esci, the other a Chinese cheapo. 1/48th scale. One of them will form the basis of the Freighter. And, you may be wondering what a Vaurbian is? Sci Fi Wikki (probably) says... VAURBIAN FREIGHTER The type K-20 Vaurbian Freighter is a rare item in the Star Wars universe. No one seems to know who the Vaurbians were, Or the location Of their home system. All that seems to remain are these ships. Which seem to be at least hundreds of years old. The Freighters are controlled by what may be an A. I. (Artificial Intelligence) built into a sealed compartment in the hull. Although it may equallly be an Alien life form or even a Vaurbian. For the sake of convenience I’ll use the term A.I. The A.I navigates and controls the ship so there is no need for a bridge. Commerce etc is handled via comms by the AI. In some ships Humans are employed by the AI for cleaning and light maintenance, as well as cargo handling. They may even be a family unit. Others use robots. The FTL drive is totally unlike anything else seen in this universe. Empire ships etc just seem to turn up the gas to number 11 and vanish. Vaurbian FTL seems to operate in a very strange way, but the AI always knows where and when it is. The drive can also be used as a weapon. It seems that no one who tried to attack one of these freighters in the past has ever been heard of again. Hence the lack of external weapons. The ships are fully atmosphere capable, so can deliver their cargo virtually anywhere. Given the size of the Empire, Freighters are always in demand. And so, some pictures of progress so far... Some boxes of bits. some of which have been donated by fellow Britmodellers. My thanks to all. More bits being kept close to hand. These will be used to disguise the basic Aeroplane (hopefully). The basic Aeroplane. The ship will be this way up, but the back becomes the front. I've made a start already, The green Gazelle bits seen here at the back have been glued on. It felt good to get something done, though I don't know when the next episode will go to press. Thanks for looking in. I hope to be back soon. Pete.

Hello everyone! MPC's vintage 1/89 Y-Wing from the distant 1980's. I decided to build it as a generic Gold Squadron Y-Wing and not representing one of the movie studio models. This poor model stayed in my stash for nearly 20 years. Originally a gift from my uncle who travelled abroad (Star Wars kits in my country in the '90s were like those mythical creatures you only hear about), it quickly went into my cousins' possession in the distant 1998ish due to kids being childish and, once there, it promptly ended broken and forgotten in an unpainted state. I found it literally lying in a stash several years later but it was missing parts of the canopy (including the clear piece) and parts of the port engine nacelle; many other parts were broken or damaged. At the time I lacked the skills to deal with that but I've been recently dabbling into 3d modelling and I have a 3d printer, so I decided to give it a try. The canopy clear parts were scratch built from thin clear plastic sheet sourced from a sandwich wrapping. 🤣 There's a noticeable seam between the top and bottom sections of the cockpit area; I had to leave it disassembled until I completed the painting, so I could then glue the clear canopy parts from the inside. The raised panel lines were sanded down and rescribed. Other minor additions are some added greebles to the sparsely detailed areas and changing the plastic gun barrels to new ones made from several diameters of hypodermic needles. Overall, a pretty fun build for such an old kit, the only really problematic area was the fitting of the engine vanes. Stand still unpainted but otherwise it's finished. The business end Next to Revell's 1/90 TIE-Interceptor. WIP shots showing the 3d printed parts.

Hi guys, this is going to be another Star Wars diorama. This time it will be a scene from the first movie A New Hope, which is when we get the first view of the Death Star. The Millennium Falcon got caught in a Tractor Beam and is pulled into hanger bay 3-27. My diorama will be based around this hanger bay. This kit of the Falcon is from the later movie and has the wrong antenna dish shape, so I have ordered the correct round dish from Shapeways. The first task was to build the hanger bay floor with the 8-sided elevator lift shaft; I bought some 2mm gloss black acrylic sheet in A3 size which had to be trimmed to fit my intended hanger bay box. I part built the Falcon up to get the basic proportions of the lift shaft and get the correct scale of the floor chevron markings. I had some clear Perspex from an old display case that I used to make the side walls of the shaft, this allowed me to mask up the lighted segments. I used old kit parts, zip ties and some photo etch to detail the walls with. My initial plan was to use some mirror coated styrene sheet to give depth to the shaft, but the position of the Falcon meant this was not possible due to the cockpit over hanging the shaft and its reflection would be seen. I have enough spare Perspex to build a 2nd layer to give me the required depth. I masked and sprayed a light grey onto the acrylic to give me the floor chevron markings. Next will be to drill the holes for the floor lighting, that's all for now folks.

This is the 1990 re-box of the original tooling released by MPC in 1983. No extra's added to the kit, it's just been done as a fun build and to get a bit more airbrush practice in (my third kit by airbrushing). The front inner cockpit surround was scratch-built from scraps as it was missing from the kit; it's not an exact replica of the missing part, but for what little you can see of it, it'll do the trick for the purpose of my shelf anyway! Painted with Tamiya acrylics, with X-35 satin gloss clear coat. Panel weathering/shadows using Citadel Miniatures 'Nuln Oil'. Display stand done using Halfords satin black car paint. As always, comments and suggestions welcome! 😎👍 Cheers!

Hi all 😎 This is the 1996 re-box of the original tooling released by MPC in 1983. Kit is built straight out-the-box. Base colour Halfords white primer (spray can). Display stand Halfords satin black (spray can). All other colours and weathering hand/brush painted with Humbrol enamels with some scuffing using a worn out piece of 3M super-fine sanding sponge. Model originally started in mid 1990's but not completed before the hobby was put to one side due to work and family commitments. At the time, the bulk of the paintwork was completed using a paused VHS copy of RoTJ for referencing. Finished (finally!) late 2020 by completing the cockpit, pilot and canopy, with some minor touching in due to 20+ years storage damage. Comments always welcome 😊 Cheers!

Star Destroyer Decals (1005 for Bandai 001) 1:14500 GreenStrawberry The Star Destroyer was the first Imperial ship to be seen in the iconic opening scene of Star Wars, that some strange people now refer to as “A New Hope”. To me it will always be Star Wars, because I’m of a certain age. Bandai have been working hard to fill lots of gaps in the available Star Wars kits for a few years now since they took up the mantle from Fine Molds when the Sequel Trilogy began, and they have a huge range of kits now, including the Vehicle range that this set of decals is intended for. They are pocket-friendly kits both in size and cost, but painting details at such a small scale can be taxing to us modellers with normal skills. I’ve had the original Vehicle scale Star Destroyer on my desk since it was first released because I became locked into an indecision-loop on how best to paint it. I’m sure I’m not alone. This set from GreenStrawberry, my favourite source of Sci-Fi detail sets, aims to help with that issue for this kit and they have a new but expanding range that so far extends to the Super Star Destroyer and the Death Star, both of which have complex paint schemes in such a small scale, plus a few others for the two variants of Slave-1. The set arrives in a clear film package with their usual dark-themed card package wrapped around a stiff card insert, a sheet of decals and instructions on where to put them. The decals are very well detailed with multiple colours, lines and greeblies that will bring out the best in your model, with the visual guide showing you where each individual part goes. The printing is crisp with good registration, colour density and sharpness, and will look best when laid down on a light greyish coat of paint that has been glossed to obtain better adhesion. My go-to Star Wars paint is Xtracrylix XA1137, so that’s what I’ll be using once I find the bloomin’ model! I intend to use this set to demonstrate the effect of the decals, as I think they will do a better job than I ever could with my shaky hands and poor eyesight. Although the decal printers aren’t named on the sheet, the colour of the backing paper and style of print reminds me of the decals often used by the likes of Special Hobby or Eduard, who are also in Czechia as the Czech Republic is now known. They will doubtless settle down well with the use of your preferred decal solution, and as long as you don’t try to rush it and apply more decals in one session than is sensible, the results should be excellent. Conclusion I got quite excited when I saw these sets in GreenStrawberry’s recent newsletter, and was very keen to try them out. I went looking for my completed Star Destroyer kit and found it, and hope to show you the results when I’m done. There is also an alternative set for the personal Star Destroyer of Admiral Thrawn, who appeared in some of the well-loved books that are still considered canon under Disney’s ownership, and had a rather fancy scheme applied to his ship to pick him out from the crowd. I’ve added a link to that below. Highly recommended. Star Destroyer (1005) Admiral Thrawn's Chimera Star Destroyer (1001) Review sample courtesy of

Hello everyone! Last year I completed a build of three Fine Molds 1/72 X-Wings (one of them being a rescue after a botched attempt from my teen years) as Red-2, Red-3 and Red-5. Given that Fine Molds provide extra parts for a landed version with an open canopy and extra decals to build several markings, I had a lot of spare parts, even after using some in my rescue of poor old Red-2. With such a large pile of parts and decals available I decided they shouldn't go to waste and decided to try and build yet another one, the caveat - this one is mostly 3d printed on my cheap, sub-$200 FDM Tevo Michelangelo printer! I know there's a lot of debate if 3d printing scale models is possible and given the entry-level equipment I have, I hope I can prove resoundingly yes. It won't hold to scrutiny at a very close inspection compared to Bandai or Fine Molds' fantastic kits, nor win a contest, but as something to sit nicely on the shelf it would do. A big, big thank you to the creator of the absolutely fantastic 3d models I am using for this print - 1/24 X-wing by Simhopp and Cockpit and pilot for 1/24 X-Wing by Simhopp! They're free, to boot! Scaled down to 33.3% it's very close in size to the Fine Molds kit; however, to exactly match the spare parts I had to resize the wings with some changes to their STL files. At 33.3% the main fuselage (comprised of four main sections) is about 2.5mm shorter than the FM kit with the rear section being just a tad shorter; barely noticeable even if they're side by side but if you want the exact length, print the forward fuselage halves at 34.3% and the rear at 35.5%. I printed the main parts from white PLA and then switched for the gun barrels to a sturdier white PET using a 0.2mm nozzle at mostly 0.1mm layer height. As I assembled the trio in flying mode, this one will be landed in a mini diorama displaying Red Leader. What I'll be using from the FM kit as spares will be: clear canopy (in fact, the spare one from my oldest kit, after polishing it with Tamiya polishing compound) top engine covers engine nozzles (short versions; what remained as spares) landing gears spare pilot figures and R2 droids The main parts printed and assembled: Engines with nozzles as test assembly: Gun barrels: Pilot figure; yes, it's 1/72 and 3d printed! Photo taken before I painted the helmet using Red Leader's markings: Panel line scribing details; not only am I not great at scribing but PLA is porous and keeping an even line is quite difficult... The first couple coats of primer revealed tons of impurities in the print. Tedious amounts of sanding, rescribing, repriming, and then some more all over again, followed. I'll spare you photos, it was boring and the kit is still waiting for a final primer coat. There are still numerous small detail issues I am not fully satisfied with but at this point it's about equal in detail level with the quality of pre-2010s Eastern Europe garage kits that I grew up with, so I guess it will do!

Hello everyone! Another model to add to my growing Star Wars collection, another RFI - this time it is Bandai's 1/72 A-Wing that I completed last week. I finally understand the hype surrounding Bandai's Star Wars kits, even more so than the T-70 (Resistance) X-Wing that I completed last year, this kit was an absolute joy to build! The engineering is brilliant and it can be completed in an afternoon without needing a drop of paint or glue, while still being not only a faithful representation of the studio model from Return of the Jedi but also a very solid build, without any loose parts falling off. Everything from the multicolor sprues, the box art, even the instructions, is top notch quality. The Death Star gun tower is an added bonus! Having decided that I won't be building an exact replica of the studio model but another similarly colored A-Wing that fought at Endor. I started by masking several of the odd out-of-place red panels (molded in colored plastic) and sprayed them with an enamel Revell matt white, then I pre-shaded the panel lines and sprayed the white-molded parts to get the same shade everywhere. The red panels just received a good panel wash. I sprayed the inside of the engines with Mr. Color RLM 04 yellow but several small streaks went around my masks and onto the white tail surfaces; so, I masked again and carefully resprayed the white panels. Incidentally, it resulted in a nice, gentle yellow gradient that looks like a decent representation of engine glow! Overall, I went for a decidedly less weathered look than my Fine Molds X-Wings using only a small brush to simulate paint chipping on the red panels, and I masked several panels and sprayed them grey as if they were changed due to battle damage. One small mishap was caused by my airbrush when it splattered a black flake of paint on the starboard panels during the final matte coating process; the black dissolved and looked like a blast mark. Not being content with having a blast mark on a Star Wars model (...), I gently sanded down the affected panels, sprayed them matt white and redid the entire weathering. There's a barely noticeable difference in the shade of the panels if you look closely but I decided to stop trying to fail myself and accept it's a Rebel fighter - they always look cobbled together! Still struggling to get good photos with my old camera and poor lighting... hope you enjoy, comments and criticism welcome!

Hi guys, at long last my 1/144 resin Imperial Shuttle has a home in this converted freezer tray. This is my first attempt at a forced perspective diorama. In the opening scene from the Return of the Jedi, Vader's shuttle is seen leaving the Star Destroyer and flying to the hanger bay on the 2nd Death Star, although the Star Destroyer was not seen from the Death Star's hanger bay in the movie; I thought it would be a cool feature to add into my diorama. Keeping to the true spirit of Industrial Light and Magic's [ILM] model construction techniques, I kit bashed all of the details from old kit parts and bits and bobs hanging around the home. Cable zip ties, disposable shaving blades, pen tops, 1/25 car engine parts, 1/32 and 1/35 helicopter parts, tank tracks, etc all went into the build. I really enjoyed this build and plan on doing another Star Wars diorama in the future. Thank you for following along and enjoy the pictures. "The Force will be with you always". ttfn. Lee.

For kit number five(!) this year, I went with the Fine Mold's 1/48 scale TIE fighter that I've had laying around in the stash for years. This coincided with the launch of the Plastic Posse Podcast TIE Fighter Group Build, which is a scale modeling podcast that I am a cohost of. I also added the ParaGrafix photo etch upgrade fret to replace most of the surface details. The kit was painted with AK Real Colors, Tamiya, and a little bit of Alcald for the solar panels. The only weathering was done with Ammo Starship Wash enamel. I haven't painted the stand yet because I'm not sure what I want to do with it yet. Comments and criticism welcomed as always!

Well, I started building this resin kit back in 2015; I managed to get the bulk of the kit together and painted. It was an easy enough build but before I could call it done I really wanted it in a diorama. In Return of the Jedi, the opening scene shows Darth Vaders Shuttle leaving the Imperial Star Destroyer and heading for the 2nd under construction Death Star. The diorama I wanted to create was the docking bay that Darth's shuttle arrives in. Now this was going to be a challenge, so the model sat on the shelf of doom until the end of last year. Modern LED lighting technology has now made it possible for me to finally get this diorama built. So I set about looking for a suitable base, it had to be tall enough to accommodate the shuttle and long enough to recreate the force field entrance. I had an old freezer box tray that I opened up the rear and glued an empty ice cream tub to the rear. This would serve as the hanger bay entrance. Lots of scratch building over the past few months have got me to the present position in the build. I ordered twelve 1/144 Storm Troopers and a tiny Star Destroyer from Shapeways 3D printing company. I wanted to give a force perspective to the diorama. Hopefully I will get this diorama finished before the end of this month, "The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force”

Hello everyone! Another of my Star Wars kit. I finished this back in spring 2020, along with my 1/72 X-Wings - you can see their RFIs 1/72 Fine Molds - Red Wing T-65 X-Wings and 1/72 Bandai - Blue Leader T-70 X-Wing. I delayed this RFI trying to make better photos with my old DSLR but no luck with that, so apologies for the bad photos! The Revell "pocket" TIE-Fighter is advertised as 1/110 but it is exactly the same size as the Bandai 1/72 one. The panel lines are a bit soft but overall detail is pretty good, particularly on the wings. Fit is generally good, especially if you use glue and don't rely on the snap joints. As a negative, I can point out that it lacks the Sherman drive spoke part that goes just behind the "canopy" on the rear of the cockpit ball and the pilot figure that comes with the kit is grossly oversized (close to 1/48). I made several minor improvements - I used hypodermic needles for the chin blaster cannon barrels, 3d printed the Sherman drive spoke, used the 1/72 pilot from the 1/90 Revell "pocket" TIE-Interceptor (not that you can see him in the cockpit, as I placed him too far back in the cockpit ball) and I decided to use quite a few stencils from various leftover decal sheets. I also designed and 3d printed a stand similar to the one used on the Fine Molds Star Wars kits - it's free and available for download on Thingiverse, if anyone's interested. The paint is a custom mix of Gunze Mr. Aqueous Color. It is quite blueish but doesn't look nearly as garishly blue in person as it does on the photos. Cockpit ball chin details: Cockpit ball rear with 3d printed part: Next to my 1/72 X-Wings in the shelf: Compared to the Revell 1/90 TIE-Interceptor. As you can clearly see, it's quite bigger (the stand is the same 3d printed model, just downscaled) despite officially being scaled as 1/110 by Revell... Overall - great kit, especially for the price, which is less than a third that of a Bandai TIE-Fighter! I bought it for about 8 euros. In terms of scale, it fits neatly next to 1/72 Bandai TIEs or other 1/72 Star Wars kits. And with a bit of extra work can be turned into a good, detailed model. Hope you like it! Best regards, Ventsislav

Hi ! here I go again with another bandai SW model. this time is the rebel ship Bwing as seen on the return of the Jedi. for me is one of the most badass ships in the SW saga. once again I looked for some tips and I find an amazing step by step tutorial https://www.themodellingnews.com/2018/11/build-guide-andy-moores-172nd-scale-b.html thank you @Andy Moore ! -I removed the canopy for the pics to better show the cockpit details. -this kit can be improved with the bandai Led unit. ( I will buy soon ) here's the pictures :

Hello all, I’m about 4 months in on my Lambda now and here is the progress so far… https://www.flickr.com/photos/191884247@N07/shares/s67s79

R3-B0 'Rebo' R Series Astromech Droid Bandai 1/12 This is R3-B0, or Rebo, an astromech who can be found trundling aimlessly around the back streets of Mos Eisley, carrying his few worldy possessions in his basket. He can occasionally be seen in the company of some of Tatooine's other droid lowlife, i.e. B0-R15, DN-LD, and N1-G3L. In real life, he's another Bandai R2 modification, actually the one that came with BB-8, and he's been waiting around since 2016 to be finished. Most of the detailing is just spares box bits and bobs, and his shopping basket is stainless steel mesh wrapped around a soldered brass wire frame. Thanks for looking Andy

Hi all, hope this finds you and yours safe & well! Well that was a year - the hobby, those on here and my club forum IPMS Ireland really helped me through it....thank you! My first finish was in January, a hangover from the 2019 Flying Boat GB - Revell's CL-415 in 1/72 with metal u/c, otherwise, OOB. Next up was Bandai's lovely tiny Millennium Falcon for the Film/Fiction GB There was a What-If GB on our club forum so my next finish was PM Models Ta-183, again mostly OOB with some spare decals. With Covid-restrictions starting to happen in March, our club started an Asian GB and this kit was kindly supplied from a friend just before our first lockdown hit – 1/72 Trumpeter P-40B and a lovely kit to build. ( Next was the Naval Aviation GB here and I built a diorama with a 1/72 Esci Sea Harrier (and lots of plastic card) for the ‘Alraigo Incident’. The van is plastic card on a Krupp Protze chassis. E E Then it was back to sci-fi with a couple of Bandai TIE Fighters converted from First Order to Empire era as seen in Solo, A Star Wars story For the 'Kit you built as a kid', Airfix's old Hellcat in 1/72 was next. I sanded down all the rivets but otherwise OOB. My first time doing 3-tone with an airbrush and I learned a lot about using pencils and pastel chalk for weathering - probably my favourite paint finish this year! By now, we were into a second lockdown here so what better time to attempt vac-form conversion! I’ve always wanted a 1/72 Greyhound and with the type due to be retired, thought it was worth a go. Probably the most challenging kitI built this year...but the most rewarding. Not perfect by any stretch but love having it in the cabinet. Falcon conversion with Fujimi bits. F For the Choppers/Vertical lift GB here, I decided to build 3 kits...not like I was going anywhere! First up was TC’s chopper from Magnum p.i converted from the 1/72 Italeri AH-6 Next was Airfix's beautiful SH-2F Seasprite, again OOB. Really wish they would re-release this as part of their classics series - it's a lovely kit for its age. And last of the choppers was Dream Models' Panther 565 converted to an Irish Air Corps Sa-365 Dauphin 2 and built in memory of the crew of 'Rescue 111', lost on a SAR mission in July 1999. Gratuitous group shot ! For the Battle of Britain GB, Airfix's nice 1/72 109 E-4 backdated to an E-3. Again, OOB with decals by Southern Expo For the Tornado STGB, I continued the Battle of Britain theme with a 1/72 F3 by Tamiya (Italeri) in the 'Red Zebra’ scheme which was the display aircraft for the 50th Anniversary. Built OOB with aftermarket decals.. It was back to Star Wars with Bandai’s 1/144 Millennium Falcon from ‘Solo – A Star Wars Story’. OOB with cockpit and engine lighting set from Captain Jacks. Bandai_Lando_Millennium_Falcon_7 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr And my last for this year and my first 1/48 was Eduard's Spitfire MK1 from their Spitfire Story boxing - built as a Christmas present for my father in law. And that's it! Thanks everyone for your support, words of encouragement and comments. It really does help one's mental health & stress. Here's hoping 2021 brings better things for us all. Stay safe and keep building models! Dermot in Dublin

This is a “what if” I just finished with an AT-ST from Bandai in 1/48th scale. To me it’s quite clear the influences used to create the Empire aesthetic in the Star Wars universe, so instead of doing it with the usual light grey scheme as seen in the Forest Moon of Endor, I thought to be more interesting to run my imagination free and place it in the eastern front during the second world war. I used some Tamiya 1/48th German Infantry figures and I made this simple vignette with some snow melting and mud. The Bandai kit is really detailed and fit perfectly without the need of glue so I totally recommend it!. To give it a WWII look I give a cast steel texture to the armour plates and I added some big bolts. Colour use was panzer grey from Tamiya and a combination of oil paints from MIG and Abteilung 502 to create the weathering. Cheers and I hope you guys like it! Jorge “Somewhere in the Eastern Front” as usual, any comments are welcome and thanks for looking!