The starting point and some comments about it

A disaster zone

We could try to claim that this shuttle landed a bit too roughly into a difficult landing zone, maybe via a couple of sturdy trees. No, it didn't really look like that, as the detached pieces had all fallen off very cleanly without taking any damage.

As I mentioned before, the cockpit module had become detached, just like the shoulder cannons with their protective armour plates and the double-barreled laser cannon from the rear of the craft. The canopy glass had never been glued on in the first place, so nothing strange there. Except that... yeah, it didn't fit in perfectly.

TODO-listing

I had painted some little details by hand, back in the day. The reason for the cockpit interior being the same grey as the outside was, if my memory was to be trusted, because I only had very few shades of Humbrol's enamel paints. Lack of options, that is. I had apparently drybrushed some darker grey here and there on the outside.

[0]: sand more space for the transparent piece so it'd be flush against the airframe
[1]: repainting the cockpit interior

While documenting the underside of the cockpit part I was pondering if I should go down the sick path that I exposed myself to earlier, while searching for reference images with something like "Lambda class shuttle cockpit interior". The way I encountered those optical fiber cable setups with Arduino/RasPi setups and the Emperor alone knew what other awesome and time-consuming modifications... My sick mind was slowly churning some thoughts about adding some light greebling in some tactical places, like adding some cabling or somesuch into that front bin.

[2]: adding some three-dimensionality to the moulded details

The open-closeable ramp left a tiny opening between the cockpit and the main compartment, but still, maybe that area, from where Darth Vader disembarked in the Return of the Jedi, should be repainted too? Of course one couldn't see that without a flashlight in any case, and if it was going to be a dark one, what'd be the point? Of course the point would be that it would be done Properly, what else?

[3]: repainting the airlock-like chamber

This next photo showed the best in this series, how awfully the rotating twin laser cannons on the wings were: twisted and bent. If I was madder than what I am, I could've considered redoing them somehow, but that didn't sound too likely at this point in this model's life.

In my opinion the wings and the vast majority of the airframe were ok, my old paintjob just wasn't quite on the level I thought I expected from myself nowadays. Some of the next photos revealed that I had managed to skip some bits with my paintbrush altogether. Mostly these photos would also show how large the model was.

Here, for example, you could see unpainted plastic in the rear. Just like those hinges of the wings were just beyond description in the original model, so when I attacked them way over a decade ago with much less experience and much worse tools just to get the damn things installed - not to mention making them rotatable. The result of my craftsmanship was just that, foul. Maybe now I should do some puttying and sanding, wherever needed.

[4]: fixing the seams

This next photo would show clearly how the leading edge of the top wing was incredibly badly painted. I really couldn't remember how I did that. One of the restoration projects I ogled at had filled this gap with greeblies, too.

[5]: general repainting