Moebius Colonial One

[philp]

Just received the new kit from Moebius to review for IPMS/USA so will kill another two birds with one stone.

The new kit comes with 55 white plastic parts and 4 clear parts which includes the 2 piece standard Moebius stand. There is a touch of flash on some of the bits, mainly around the window areas of the sail and some on the fuselage but nothing too extreme.

Besides the instructions and a nice set of decals you also get a print of the original design.

Here are a couple shots of the some of the sprues.

The kit gives you the option of posing it in flying mode or landed. There are rear landing legs as alternate parts so make sure you pay attention to the instructions when you are building. You also have the option to pose the engine Blast Guards in folded or fully deployed mode but all the pictures and videos I can find show these set at a 45 degree angle when in flight so I will be modifying the parts and adding them at the end of the build.

One other bit to watch out for is the forward landing gear. It is molded deployed on the kit and you have to cut it off and add it back for the inflight mode. This is spelled out in the instructions but is easy to miss if you are just skimming along.

Here are the bits. The left shot shows the lower portion cut off and shortened. The right side shows it extended as molded.

Still debating how to paint this one. I am going to build Colonial Heavy 798 which was it's name before Rosalyn becomes the President and it got renamed Colonial One. Basically the only difference is I won't be using the 2 Galactic seal decals. The lower fuselage is a light blue and the rest of the main parts are white. The paint guide in the instructions leaves much to be desired and is the low point in this kit for me. Basically is says White for upper hull, Light Blue for lower hull and Gray for the engines. That is the full extent of the color guide. There is a note advising these are general guidelines and you may want to do more in depth research for greater detail. Oh well.

So, should I paint the lower hull piece blue before I glue it together and then mask off to paint the white or vise versa? Maybe glue the main hull parts together and then paint? There are some decent seams that will need some putty where the sail meets the hull so probably will put those main parts together, putty and then mask and spray.

[Ian Shumsky]

Looks interesting!

[prowler0000]

How big is it?

I only ask as the very obvious windows look solid to me, & i wondered if there was any observable interior?

Otherwise, roll on with construction......

[philp]

Kit is in 1/350th scale and comes out about 10" long. Have seen a couple guys drill out the fuselage windows and light it but since it is a review kit (and I suck at electronics) am just building OOB.

There are 2 clear windows, the pilots cabin and what is probably an observation window at the back of the fin, sail, whatever you call it.

[Hunter Rose]

Not seen the new battlestar galactica so not familiar with the ship, but it looks cool, look forward to seeing what you do with it

[philp]

Ok, got the fuselage together and the sail done and they are glued on but will need some putty work.

Also built the two main engines and they both didn't fit very well. Lovely gaps to putty.

Will see how things look when I get back from CoMMiESFest on Sunday.

[Ian Shumsky]

Ouch! Model is still on my want list though!

[philp]

Got the engines puttied up and sanded. Need to give them a coat of paint and see how they look.

Also assembled the main body pieces. What do you know, more gaps.

So, trying something one of the modelers I follow uses called Tulip Fabric paint. Picked up a bottle at Walmart.

First impression didn't work too well so used some regular Tamiya putty in a couple places and did another coat of the tulip along the fin to fuselage seam. Will see how that turns out.

Assembled the other other engine bits and bobs today but won't add them until after the body is painted and decaled. So some sanding down to come and than a coat of white and see where we are.

Not sure if this will be done by Sunday but will give it a shot.

[philp]

Well, this isn't locked up yet so will keep posting

Put together the engines and landing pod/wing things.

Also sprayed the fuselage/body flat white.

As I was gluing on the nose gear in the up position I looked at the instructions and found out I went a bit too far. There are a couple pieced to represent the gear up in the kit so had to remove the modified part I did and add them on. Much smoother look with them.

Next up was looking at how to modify the engine petals (I don't know what to call them). The kit gives two options, fully opened or fully closed. But looking at pics of the ship in flight they were set at about a 45 degree angle. So looking at the parts I picked the one that was fully open and cut off the mounting tabs. Then stuck it in the hole and bent it back until I got it close. Same for the other side. The top and bottom ones have different mounting so will look at them but think I can just cut the tab off of them.

Goal is to get this finished before I head to the Nats next Wednesday. Hopefully the thread will stay accessible until then. If not, hopefully someone will move it to the Sci-Fi WIP location.

[philp]

Ok, making a valiant effort but don't think it will be done before I leave for Nats.

First I masked off the body and painted the back end Tamiya Dark Ocean Grey. Then more masking for the light blue bottom.

I warm up the spray paint so it flows better (at least, I think so). Just run hot water into a container and let the can sit for a couple minutes.

Next I sprayed the engines/landing gear and the engine vanes in Model Master Camouflage Grey.

Was able to do a bit of detail painting on the engines but needs more. The kit instructions are very lacking here just stating the back end is grey.

Going to try the long body decals tomorrow and if that works ok then should be able to glue the other bits on but still could use more detail painting so will see where we get.

[philp]

Well, finally finished this one.

Let's catch up.

The belly was sprayed with Tamiya AS-5 Luftwaffe Light Blue. This looked like a pretty good match.

So on to the decals. Ah the decals, so much fun.

I decided to start with the small bits that go on the engine pods and the engine petals. These worked ok after I trimmed them close though the engine ones needed Micro Sol to settle down.

The long markings on the sides had me worried because they are two separate decals, one for the blue and a thin gold stripe. I thought about cutting them into bits but since I was doing this for a review figured I would try as is. I decided that it would be easier to get the gold stripe added and then put the blue one on so everything would line up. Well, the stripe came off the paper in the water (these all released very quickly so be careful) so now I had to try to figure out which end had the curve and then get it on the model. After much wrestling and Micro Set later I finally had it looking good. Was just a bit long so cut off the overhang and now on to the blue stripe. This is thicker so easier to manage but as I was looking at the decal I noticed that there was a lot of extra color below the windows. In fact, too much for the gold stripe to sit below it and have the windows line up. Looking at the instructions again the blue stripe was #3 and the gold stripe #5 so looks like the blue should have been put on first and then the gold added "over" it. Great (ok, not the actual Anglo-Saxon verbiage I used). So now what? I had the gold on the model and the blue soaked and ready to go. So some more Micro Set and I moved the gold decal down to the lower fuselage side, placed the blue stripe and then worked the gold stripe back up on top. Yeah, pretty much what you would expect but I got it close. A good healthy dose of Micro Sol to get the stripes over the details and called it a night.

You can also see the blue paint on the window frames and surrounding area. Used Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue 70.899 as recommended by someone else. I think it is a bit darker than the decals but close enough.

[philp]

So the next day I tackled the stripes on the other side. This time I started with the blue stripe and then put the gold over the top. That actually worked ok except the gold stripe broke several times while trying to place it. Once all was in place I used Micro Sol again and took one more day to recoop.

The next day I managed to get the rest of the decals on the fin and the Intersun markings. Micro Sol was again needed on the fin decals.

You can see they don't quit match up so more paint was needed for touch up.

And that was that. Really need to do some weathering, especially around the engines and some kind of color for the windows but at this point I am just going to call it done. Will add a few more pics in the Sci-Fi RFI section.

Overall I was not happy with some of the fit, the lack in the instructions, especially regarding painting the engines and the decals but where else are you going to find an injection molded Colonial One kit.