This is the 1/48th scale Fine Molds model. The molding and fit of the kit are excellent. It's actually a snap and screw together kit, but I ended up gluing everything. The only issue I ran into was that I, as a general rule, will assemble parts a half-dozen times to test fit before I apply glue, and with the tight tolerances in this model, I broke a few joints during the process. Nothing that glue wouldn't fix, though. I did need to clamp the upper and lower fuselage together to get rid of a minimum gap, but otherwise the fit was perfect. ![](thumbnails/IMG_4287.jpg)
The model is pretty much out of the box, with the exception of the cockpit, the markings, and the droid. In the cockpit I added bits of spare photo etch from 1/350th scale ship kits in a few places to dress up smooth boxes and surfaces, and I also made some conduit hoses out of guitar string. Simple enough, but it made a huge difference in the look. The droid head is an R5 from an after-market set that's long out of production. It's not entirely correct in that the head should be a trapezoid at the very top and blend down to the circular bottom, but I didn't want to modify such a nice looking detail. Since it wasn't completely correct, I painted the R5's eye copper, just because I love that color and so rarely have a chance to use it.![](thumbnails/IMG_4255.jpg)
There are photos of the actor who played John Brannon on the internet, and I used those to do some minimal helmet markings. The red color and the white stripe wasn't difficult, but the scalloped detail on the front was too much to handle, so a single black dot made due, and I drew in the arrow shapes on the side of the helmet with a Sharpie.
The kit comes with markings for Skywalker's "Red-5", both in water transfer decals and regular peel-and-stick stickers for the kids, but the only decals I used were for the instrument panel in the cockpit; everything else is masked and airbrushed. I didn't want to do "Red 5", Luke Skywalker's ship, as you can't swing a wombat without hitting one of those things. |