StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My next project is decided.

Gradius II version of the Vic Viper, which was half off from HLJ the other week.









Attractive box, and a gorgeous manual.











they go through a lot of technical details too, which is nice.









5 white sprues, 1 dark gray, 1 clear, and a sheet of thick, shiny, totally useless stickers.







The plan is to ignore the supplied flight base, and sculpt a Moai for it to be buzzing over, and in addition have the option bits flying in formation, perhaps even glowing.

This one should be fun. ^.^

Looks pretty nifty, Gradius was good times :D
How are you going to make things glow - insert a battery + wire LEDs? Or maybe use glow-in-the-dark paint? Whichever way you use, that would be pretty awesome.

Today I did some test fitting, and immediately started lopping off locator pins. The plastic is weird, translucent and kind of soft and brittle. This is going to be interesting.



Yeah. that won't work.

On to more test fitting. Look at that cockpit..




Yeah. Uh.



We got some work to do.

Upper and lower fuselage mostly completed.

First I had to fill in the large posts for the two nested canopies. I drew in the panel lines for my own reference, so I don't wipe anything out with sanding. You can really see the odd pebbly texture of the very resin-like plastic here.



So here's what I did with the cockpit. Cemented it to the upper fuselage, it's actually quite a good fit! Chopped the back of the seat, I'll rebuild that as well as cowl in the back, and add some details. Not too much, with two tinted canopies in the way, it'll be chunky to be seen.




This fuselage is the same for the Vic Viper 1, 2, and 3, and the hole at the bottom needed to be enlarged for the connector for the II's undercarriage to actually fit. Pretty much every part is like this, *something* needs to be cut, thinned, or modified to make it fit right.
Before,




and after cutting.




But wait, see those big gray things coming out the option bit bays?





They keep the bay doors from actually fitting flush with the cowlings. dammit. Also see that square peg on the landing bay door to let it be 'easily removed'? Yeah, that's gonna go away.




I see no reason to keep the option bay doors removable, so the gray things gotta go.





That's better! Need to clean it up a little, but it's well on its way. I just spot-cemented the doors from the insides of the bay, while it was sitting on a flat surface.





The intake cowlings needed a little help. Another case of oversize pins, oversize locator holes, it's like they're trying to make things not fit right. Well, that's taken care of easily enough.




Cowlings are on! once all the fitment issues are taken care of, they look pretty good!





but wait! The little fin on the belly has a huge plastic pin that's, guess what? Too big! That won't work. Chop and Glue.




That's it for today! Next I start on the weapon bay mandibles.

That's hilarious.

Wow, that's both somewhat ridiculous and also sweet-looking.

So, I've got a reference image for the cockpit.. now how to pull this off at 1/100 scale?



I'm seriously considering using a spare Mechaskunk F-thruster baffle to light up the tailpipe of this baby. The wiring should be simplified because I'm using a scenic Moai base. The thruster for the thing is a double-bell, and it looks like I can simply saw off the bottom of the inner bell, and replace it with the clear baffle. This is very tempting.

first I took the xacto razor saw to the kit's inner bell, cause I'm replacing the baffle with the mechaskunk F-thruster baffle. Also have to carefully remove the post at the center, to relocate it.





Everything joined up pretty easy. The size was *perfect* didn't need to fiddle at all. And it all goes right together.





And we have a successful test burn! The wiring is, well, a hack, I'm actually using the 2 AA's, and holding a third AA in series directly to the contact. Don't Try This at Home. the final version will use a 12v cell and I need to pick up a 1000 ohm resistor from Fry's.

Man, that is fucking dope sauce!

Does it really need that much juice?

Darth Yoshi wrote:Does it really need that much juice?

the LED I'm using has a 3.6v forward voltage rating, which means it needs that much to fully light. I tried it with 3 and it barely does anything. So I can run 4.5v with a small resistor (it works as you can see, but I don't want to overvolt it long term.) or get a different power source like a 9v or 6v camera battery. I've got some 12v car remote cells sitting around doing nothing though, and they'd be easy to use.

Is that going to be the only light, or are there more parts to light up? I've never seen a jet with an underglow kit.

Phantasee wrote:Is that going to be the only light, or are there more parts to light up? I've never seen a jet with an underglow kit.

Nah, that's pretty much it, though I've been tempted to light all four option bits, getting the wiring for that to look good would be a nightmare.

Today was spent sanding, re-scribing every. single. panel line, sanding some more, and assembling the weapon mandibles, which will also need to be sanded and re-scribed. I need to finalize the wiring, and where it's going to come out, so that I can assemble the fuselage halves.

Removed yet more 'assembly aids' for getting in my way too much. Whoever engineered this kit went WAY overboard on the snap-fit convenience, thus guaranteeing that it can never ever be easily assembled to any sort of standard.

I have three bruised fingertips and can't feel my thumb. More tomorrow.