1:72 Starfury Thunderbolt from Babylon 5

[Kallisti]

I've had this resin kit from Alliance models for about 10 years and so the time has come to finally build the bloody thing!

 

its a resin kit, none of this new-fangled 3D printing!!!  it comes with instructions and decals (unlike most 3D prints!) 

 

 

 

 

Its has a quite detailed cockpit with seat betls moulded into the seats but to be honest this needs to have pilots flying it as the kit doesn't come with any landing gear options so needs to be displayed flying

 

 

I've been trying to find some of the footage of the Thunderbolts in action when they attacked the Mars colony but so far haven't been able to find any. It is depicted in the season 3 episode Severed Dreams, one of the finest 48 minutes of SciFi television I've ever watched!

 

I don't know exactly why I've put off building this kit for such a long time, but the time has finally come!

Edited April 13 by Kallisti

[Kallisti]

Of course as soon as I wrote about the lack of pilots I remembered buying a set of 1:72 figures that would work as the pilots! I've just spent the last hour trying to find them in the "safe" place I'd stashed them all those years ago, and finally came across them again! 1:72 Black Hawk pilots from JP Productions

 

 

The two pilot figures fit almost perfectly - I've had to remove the front pilot's left arm as its reaching for the collective for the chipper but that doesn't work in this cockpit so I'll just reattach it at a slightly different angle and it will be fine!

 

[Nocoolname]

Just before I parked the model making last month to focus on my studies and exams I started on the Starfury Mk 1 that’d been lurking in the stash since the year dot. I’d made enough progress on other builds that I felt safe to finally have a crack at it. I just started to rescribe the panel lines on one part. I have the lighting kit and cockpit and engine detail sets to go with it. 
 

Babylon 5 is one of my all time favourites. In fact the very first model I built after returning to the hobby (and before another 7 year gap) was the Whitestar by Warp. Talk about jumping in at the deep end. It was my first resin kit and while the shape was great the resin quality was an absolute shocker.
 

I’ll have to be careful following this build because if it causes me to start watching the series again that’ll be everything else out of the window 😂

 

I nearly bought the Thunderbolt but glad I didn’t given I already had way more kits than I could build and already had to let go of the Hyperion Cruiser I had bought as well as the B5 station. That said I still have the Omega Destroyer in the stash along with a now rare Howling Wolf Shadow Battle Crab which has all of the veins moulded in - a real work of art. 

[Kallisti]

I always fancied a White Star but never fancied the paint job so yes it was brave of your to start on that one  That said I saw a beautifully made one a few months back but the modeller admitted he'd used decals for it

 

I built the Revell Starfuty a long time ago - it was my first medal at Scale Model world back in 2012, a silver but I was very pleased with that! 

I later built the Warp (very apt name) kit of the Agamemnon

and a couple years ago I built a 1:48 3D printed Starfury in a representation of the docking bay on B5

I also have the Revell B5 kit in the stash, although I doubt I'll build it until I can get replacement decals that are the correct colour - B5 wasn't lavender in colour!!!

 

 

[Nocoolname]

Just now, Kallisti said:

I always fancied a White Star but never fancied the paint job so yes it was brave of your to start on that one  That said I saw a beautifully made one a few months back but the modeller admitted he'd used decals for it

 

I built the Revell Starfuty a long time ago - it was my first medal at Scale Model world back in 2012, a silver but I was very pleased with that! 

I later built the Warp (very apt name) kit of the Agamemnon

and a couple years ago I built a 1:48 3D printed Starfury in a representation of the docking bay on B5

I also have the Revell B5 kit in the stash, although I doubt I'll build it until I can get replacement decals that are the correct colour - B5 wasn't lavender in colour!!!

 

 

Ah, some cracking builds you have there! That's another one of your threads I've bookmarked as a reference for when I pick my builds up again.

 

On the Whitestar, I too cheated on the paint job and went with the decals option. They didn't look too bad, though I always wanted to do another at some point properly painted up but sadly and to my shame, let go of a beautifully cast IFactory version of this ship 😔

 

If I get round to my Omega I'm thinking of doing the paneling as custom decals - similar to what I got from Acreation for the Moebius Battlestar Galactica

[Skiffy]

I love Babylon 5, ever since seeing the pilot on British TV back in the day. I have the old Starfury Mk1 kit by Revell - about half built, though I did buy the resin gun upgrades like you did.

I'll be watching this build, it's off to a great start - maybe it'll shame me into finishing my old Starfury.

[Misrule]

Big fan of the Starfury design, the original was nifty but the Thunderbolt was a real beast. One of them shot down a Vorlon fighter in the last big battle, no small achievement! Great show with some great designs.

 

I'd recommend this chaps site as a reference for the 3D models and stories behind them

https://www.b5scrolls.com/

 

This being the T-bolt specific reference

https://www.b5scrolls.com/#Screen2_01_10

https://www.b5scrolls.com/#Screen5_01_10

 

 

Edited April 16 by Misrule

[Ventsislav Gramatski]

Babylon 5 was absolutely stellar, I re-watched the original five seasons about three years back (during a well-known period most of us had to stay at home), shame it never reached the massive following of other sci-fi series like Star Trek.

 

There were some great ship designs in the series, and the kits for these are now exceedingly rare. The Thunderbolt in particular, I haven't seen many of these. Good luck with the build!

Edited April 22 by Ventsislav Gramatski

[Kallisti]

Thanks for the responses, glad its tweaked some interest  B5 was my favourite TV Sci Fi to many many years (until The Expanse came along to be honest, although there was a brief flurry of Firefly...) There are some truly outstanding dramatic moments, particularly between G'Kar and Londo who were the doomed tragic couple. It was a shame the TV execs messed up the original 5 year plan, but then what do TV execs ever know about good TV?

 

Moving on, the resin is slowly being assembled, but there are quite a few issues with it. Several voids have needed filling such as here on the piece that attaches to the rear of the upper wing 

 

 

Joints on the engine intakes are also a bit ropey

 

 

The rear bulkhead of the fuselage was a poor fit that needed a lot of filler and the chin gun housing had large gaps around it that needed multiple rounds of filler applied

 

 

The front "intakes" for the 4 engine housings also needed a lot of fettling and filling.

 

 

Also I think the age of the resin is not helping ad there are some areas that are delaminating particularly noticeable on the outer edges of the upper surface of the lower wing here

 

 

This is tedious work as I need to give the filler a day to fully cure before sanding back. Eventually I got as far as being able to spray some Halfords grey primer and in the worst cases some filler primer which helped smooth some of the rougher areas.

 

More to come...

[Kallisti]

Further progress over the Easter weekend - first off the engines were glued onto the wings. That simple statement hides the ridiculous difficult that ended up being! First off I tried the 2 part epoxy resin but that took far too long to set and wasn't able to hold them in place stable for long enough. So I resorted to CY glue and that was messy as well but at last I was able to use an accelerator to glue them. Then came filling the gaps which too a couple of days of filling, sanding and filling again!

 

It worked though and eventually I was able to prime it all and not see any major blemishes. The Halfords Primer was smoothed with micromesh and then a coat of grey Tamiya primer was sprayed over the top. Once this was set and again smoothed with micromesh, I then decided to try my hand at pre-shading. I must admit to not being either a) a particular fan of the technique and b) not very good at it. I somehow suspect those two reasons are linked  Anyway you have to keep trying sometimes so thats where its got to now...

 

 

 

 

I think the main problem I have here is my airbrush doesn't spray fine lines as you can see. Its also recently taken up spitting when the trigger is first depressed. I think it needs a strip down and thorough clean. I'll be spraying the overcoat of XF-80 grey this evening so hopefully it works out okay!

[Kallisti]

Main colour has gone on and it worked reasonably well over the pre-shading, although I was concerned at first that I hadn't put enough on, but I resisted the temptation to fiddle and instead masked and painted the red stripes and then added some decals. The decals had been previously treated with Liquid Decal Film but were not very robust and the sharkmouth decals broke up quite badly and needed to be carefully teased back into place...

 

 

 

 

I had some issues with the lower wing - there was a significant amount of red paint creep under the masking tape - these lower win surfaces are not very accessible, and while trying to repair that paint creep I almost messed the whole thing up but rescued it my streaking the paint as if it was weathered, so it ended up looking okay. 

 

Now before anyone goes on about "weathering in space", these fighters were shown flying in atmospheres as well, hence the wings! In any case, even in space, there is dirt and dust so weathering happens. Space isn't clean!

 

Next stage is to finish painting the cockpit and pilots and weathering...

 

Oh I forgot previously to post the photos of the engines, these have been give the alclad treatment, but its not very clear in this photo...

 

 

 

 

[JamesP]

A challenging build if only of your patience. I do like the tweezer stands I've not seen them before. I've clipped a clothes peg on my in the past to achieve the same.

[Kallisti]

"How will this end?"

"In Fire!"

 

Well not quite, but it has come to an end and the result does not deserve to be thrown in a fire! It must be said this thing has fought me all the way, but that might be a consequence of leaving a resin kit sitting on the shelf for 10+ years!!!

 

Final assembly and weathering were not without drama - I managed to break one of the winglets off not once but twice but thankfully both were repairable without a problem. Fitting the canopy was a non trivial exercise and needed a considerable amount of Mr Surfacer 500 coaxed into the gaps to fill them up. However, here is the finished Thunderbolt in all its glory!

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's another addition to my Babylon 5 collection which I'm now quite proud of! Next out of the stash will be another shakmouth.. .this time a 1:48 Airfix P40-B Warhawk... yes I know its not Sci Fi, sometimes I DO build "normal" things