Babylon 5 Omega Class Destroyer by Warp

[Guest]

This is likely to dsrupt my build schedule for this year, but I could not resist making a start! I was inspired by watching a Large Scale vacform build of a Minbari fighter on the Large Scale Planes board recently and so the credit card got a kicking and a very simple package arrived about a week later. It was an unfancy carboard box that looked like this:

Inside were lots of plastic bags with bits of resin in, plus some white metal bits, a PE fret and a decal sheet. Oh and a brass rod as well!

The instruction erm "booklet" is remarkably skimpy but seems to contain all the instructions:

So my hope is to make it look a bit like this:

This should be fun!

[Guest]

Wow! That's a very interesting model Andrew!!

Will follow this one!! Keep the pics coming please!

Knowing your builds, you will do justicie with it, I'm sure about it mate!

Cheers

Polux

[Adrian "Marvel" Reynolds]

Oh I love this kit,, looking forward to seeing it progress

Adrian

[papa 695]

Looks a very nice kit Andrew

[Dave W]

As a fan of the series, I'm looking forward to seeing you work your magic on this one.Id like to build all the ships from the series.Especially the Shadows ship and Koch's Vorlon vessel.One day....

[Guest]

Nice to see some interest in this insane venture

To begin: Bag #1 contains the parts for the rear portion including the engines. Since its resin, first thing first, give it a good wash in soapy water...

Next is assembling the main box. This went together without too much trouble - well apart from the usual lots of cleaning up the resin joint surfaces. There seems to be a lot of "bobbling" in the castings, but there aren't that many bubbles - well in these components at least. This is the inside and the back plate which will hold the exhaust tubes and other sundry gear. Its a bit of a poor fit, but it will be fixable with careful use of dissolved putty when it need to be joined.

Engine exhausts: These did have quite a few bubbles. You can see the filler on some of these that will be sanded off when dry.

I drilled them out a bit deeper:

I did contemplate lighting this thing, and that would have included the exhausts, but frankly I think for ONCE I'm going to build something "out of the box", and that includes motorising the rotating mid section. I did spend some time thinking about how this could be done, but then I realised the basic construction of this is going to be challenging enough... there comes a time when even I have to say ENOUGH!!!

No bar-armour either!!!

More engine detail - these pieces site between each vertical stack of exhausts. The castings on these were a bit ropey - there is lots of small detail in the casting but much of it was obscured by blobs of resin. I may return to these later to add some extra details.

By the way, this is what the engines should look like when built:

Auxiliary thrusters - again I drilled out the holes deeper than the castings:

So that the main components of the engine section. There are some PE parts to add when its all assembled. I'm now thinking about painting this before it all goes together. The exhausts should be reddish at the base blending to blue towards the end so at least these will need painting before assembly. I'll need to think about it...

...and now I have to stop modelling as I have to go to Marseilles tomorrow for a business meeting on Monday - hope the weather is better in the South of France than it is in Blighty!!!

[papa 695]

A great start andrew and hope the meeting goes well

[mossiepilot]

I was a big fan of B5 when it was on the tele, so I'll enjoy watching your build come together.

Cracking work so far Andrew, keep up the great work mate.

Tony.

[Guest]

cracking work so far i have one of these in my stash haven't gotten around to looking at it yet. still haven't finished my white star.

Scott.

[Guest]

An update from the past week...

First off the engine block has been extended with the rear central section. This needed a lot of filling in some very awkward places. The casting of the circular end piece was a nightmare to get a smooth finish, but perseverance paid off.

Next I moved forward another stage and assembled the 6 solid chunks of resin that constitute the central rotating accommodation section. This fitted together remarkably well with just a bit of filler needed along the joints. The pieces have some very nice moulded detail, although along the ends there was a lot of bubbling in the resin that needed trimming.

and finally for this update, here is how it looks together with the brass rod holding everything in line. The rotating section will revolve around the rod without much problem and its a tight enough fit in the rear section to hold things in place. The rod looks to be the right length to fit the front section on with out trimming.

I've scrubbed the pieces for the front assembly and discovered that some of the panels for the square section are rather warped so will need some careful heat treatment to sort them out.

As you can see I've put primer on some pieces and I'm currently in the process of painting the engine nozzels so will show those when they are done. At that point I can properly assemble the engine bay.

I'm sourcing a nice wooden plinth to use as a stand, so will probably have to drill some holes into the bottom sides of the central segments to provide adequate support.

Today's Koshism: Understanding is a three-edged sword.