Star Destroyer priming

The classic colour scheme for an Imperial Star Destroyer has been white (though I prefer some shade of grey myself) and that's how I primed this one. Quick and simple, even with the white plastic of the model itself.

Now we were ready for some artistic liberties and unusual paint schemes. Hooray!

At the Kuat shipyards

Assembling the spaceship

I started the assembly from the four-piece command tower and then progressed to the engine department. Those bridge bits didn't quite sit as flushly as I had expected. I also had to work a bit on the studs of the engine nozzles, but that's nothing you'd see from the outside.

The hull itself consisted of four pieces. To the bottom half I glued the Solar Ionization Reactor's dome and the engine bit. Then the top half of the hull was glued on and I just squeezed the halves tightly together to make them fit nicely.

There wasn't much more to do anymore but to glue on the command tower and the piece that came between it and the hull. Oh and the two-piece stand that I decided not to glue into the hull, just to make everything easier to paint nicely.

It ended up being quite pretty. Pretty but not big, from the top of my head I'd say that my Metal Earth Models ISD was a bit smaller than this one. And considering the time this took about half an hour, including the cleaning up and whatnot.

Project VI/17

Revell's ISD

This 1:12300 scale Imperial-class Star Destroyer was, as I have mentioned earlier, a yule gift for the Project Assistant. I hadn't even primed her Ka-50 when she came to ask me to build this. Her idea was to paint this one either brown or pink. Despite these threats of iconoclasty I took this one to be worked on. And yes, my reports have been somewhat off from the real world lately, can't help it :D

The instructions

As somehow expected, the instructions were ultrasimple. I really couldn't think why this kit was marked at difficulty 3 out of 5. Maybe there was some kind of deep wisdom that I just couldn't see.

I was really amused when I found the decal sheet. With one decal. And that one was to be slapped onto the front of the display stand.

The bits

All the pieces for this model fit in two small sprues. The pieces were decently sized and at least at a first glance they looked nicely detailed, especially the main hull pieces. Now if someone made a modern version of the MPC/ERTL kit...

Finished: Project V/17

Last minute mumblings

Yeah, well. The spring went, as I think I said at some point, a bit differently than how I had thought. My scale modeling time was also quite a bit more limited as time just went somewhere. For that same reason this post, that I had scheduled for the second to last week of May, was incomplete and therefore didn't get published. Still, here it is now.

My only mentionable deviation from my previous posts under this same topic was that I repainted the launch pad again with Dunkelgelb (Tamiya XF-60) because the dirtiness on the weird bits just didn't feel right to me. Now you can see them "clean" in the final photos. Oh and I just took the last photos three evenings ago, even though the model itself had been finished for weeks (or could it be months already at this point?), thanks to my overcautious preparations which proved to be less cautious than what I'd needed. But you can't control life events :)

The background story according to the instructions

Here's the letter-by-letter copy of the instruction sheet's text with its formatting and all. Curious stuff, all in all.

"At the end of 1944 the Germans started to occupy themselves with the possibility of a rocket attack against the territory of the USA.

Initially the possibility of launching A-4 rockets with the help of class XXI submarines was considered but the development was in January 1945 interrupted and based on the requirement of the forces the development of a double stage so called "American Rocket" started.

The A-9 rocket had to be lifted to an altitude of 160km by the A-10 booster rocket and then it was able to cover up to 5000 km in 45 minutes. Before reaching the target the pilot had to catapult from A-9. During the flight th epilot had to be guided by submarines on the surface of the Atlantic ocean. Before the end of the war tests of the A-9 rocket itself without the A-10 stage were carried out.

Flying weight of the A-9 itself 16 260kg. Max. speed 2800m/sec. Engine EMW with 25 400kg thrust."

And those photos

Switching jobs

Yesterday, the second of June, was my last day of work at my longest-lasting job so far. I did get to be there for almost nine years (I ended up leaving three months before that milestone). Then I'll enter the doors of the next workplace on Monday already.

After the boss-part of the ceremony and after my own few stupid words my coworker Hannis wanted to say something too and ended that by dropping a largeish plastic bag on me "we wanted to give you something for you to remember us by". I got a Star Wars hat and two scale models. That rendered me speechless, as I didn't think of preparing for anything like that.

The models were chosen by Iiro, the benevolent dictator of Presaleztan. His idea with the T-35 was that it was a huge tank, there was plenty to do and it was a vehicle that I wasn't too likely to buy myself. So it'd remind me of them that much easier.

The German rocket launcher was an obvious choice, I was told. Its wooden bits and the hugeness of the rockets themselves initiated a lively discussion among those of us who are interested in this sort of stuff, while the rest weren't too involved. No surprises there.

I promised (or should I say threatened?) to show the results whenever I was done. We also thought that it'd be silly or amusing to paint the company logo or name or something like it on the tank itself. Maybe I'd do that, because why not? :p