Battlestar Galactica TOS Shuttle

Kit by SMT / Master by Alfred Wong

Scale 1:48 (Studio Scale)

Length ~59 cm

Last year SMT finally made this nice studio scale kit available and I took the chance to get one.

The classic Battlestar Galactica had some very cool designs, most notably the Galactica itself.

This transport shuttle is also one of my favourite ships, so I´m glad it´s available.

The kit is rather easy to build. One minor point is that there is no real interior for the cabin,

just the control panel and three seats. Inspired by a fellow modelbuilder I decided to scratchbuild

my own interior - even if could not be seen very clearly. Here is the result:

I decided not to light the kit, mostly because in order to light the engines I´d have to do major drilling.

The landing gear is a bit reinforced with brass rods, but I still don´t believe it would be able to

hold the weight of the kit, so I put a "security" aluminium rod in the middle. That rod can be cut down

to just the length that the landing gear is on the ground - but I liked it better slightly hovering.

Painting was rather easy - basically an lightly tinted white and some shades of that color on the

various panels. The cockpit was painted before assembly and the windows masked out while painting the outer hull.

The main red stripe was painted, all other elements of the excellent decal sheet were used in various places.

Last step were a couple of steps to apply weathering - first with the airbrush, then a wash, and finally some rust.

All in all a pretty quick built - took me just under a month.