Friday 4 September 2015

The Saturn build

If you build scratch-built SF craft, or just like reading about them, i do urge you to pick up this book if you've not already got it:



Authored totally by Gary R Welsh, it features some fantastic recreations of the Rebel Fleet in Star Wars, in very detailed articles, along with some of Gary's own designs and Servalan's command ship from Blakes 7.
HIGHLY recommended.
Leafing through it again just recently, one design really leapt out at me:



I really like the look of it and, though Gary calls it a Star Wars tanker, it screams rag-tag fleet from Battlestar Galactica to me.
Reading the piece on it, it became more desirable - i already had some of the kit parts and the rest i figured i could substitutes for.
Not to copy the ship per se, more to use it as a springboard and insperation and go my own way.



First step would be to address the main hull. For his, Gary used the lower part of the first stage from the Airfix Saturn V kit times two. I already had one, so had to buy another kit. The cheapest i could find was by Revell rather than Airfix, but it was still 1/144th scale, so ordered one and prayed the parts would be similar:



The kit came today, and straight away i can see differences, even though i've not seen an Airfix version for a good 35 years - some of the parts are in metallic grey rather than white, there's also a launch pad and figures that sure weren't on the one i grew up with.
Anyway, the first stage skirt happily is and exact match so i stuck them together right way - the white one is the brand new Revell, the cream one my 35 year-old Airfix.
Gary goes into quite a bit of length on parts used in his articles, but not all nor why - but i can see why he's added blocky details in the middle sections. Its to cover up those whacking great holes isn't it? Oh, and like Gary, i've added the dome at front - grey here rather than white on his.

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