Image: Another look at the wing art

Image: Front view

I built this 'fury for a close friend. She's a Special Agent with Fish & Wildlife during the week, a Marine Military Policewoman on the weekends, and a Babylon 5 fan all the time.

Unfortunately, it was one of those models where everything that could go wrong, did. I had originally tried rescribing the raised panel lines. I made a hash of that, and ended up filling in my mistakes with superglue and sanding everything smooth. Of cousre I missed spots .... I also had a b****h of a time filling the gaping seams between inner and outer wing halves. Then, I got the starboard side crooked when I assembled it, and didn't notice until the glue had set. I scratchbuilt a set of guns to replace the awful kit parts, but just couldn't get them right.

About the only thing that went right was the painting. I preshaded panel lines with black, then overcoated with Tamiya Grey. Several gloss coats later, I was ready for decals.

I used a mix of kit decals, stuff from the spare decal bin, and a couple Starship Modeler cheesecake sets. The kit decals were horrible, refusing to settle down even when attacked by Solvaset. The white stripes, cut from a Monogram air racer kit, bled when Microsol was applied. The Starship Modeler decals worked fine, except for some wrinkling around the "hump" at the top/center of the wing.

The base is a Starship Modeler logo plaque, painted Gunmetal and Silver and burnished with SNJ aluminum powder. The model is nounted to it by a piece of square brass tube. Managed to get superglue drips on that when I was setting it implace - the final insult.

It'll never see a contest table, but from a couple feet away it doesn't look bad at all. And she's tickled by it, so ... all's well that ends well.