[WIP] Mond ’48 saucer gets painted

Hooray hooray for speed chargers!!

Pics ahoy:

Finished top of the UFO. Not sure if you can make out the two-colour pattern or the chipping/wear and tear. Basically sprayed with Halfords Matt Black and then a Halfords Silver (can’t remember which one) before brush painting the custom mix. After it dried I gently scratched with fine sandpaper to rub away the colour coat and show the silver. Made sure I always rubbed in the right direction (oo-er), towards the top centre, to get a feeling that it has made the trip to Earth and back to the Moon several times.

I then blobbed on ProModeller Dark Dirt wash, let it dry and then rubbed it off with a damp kitchen towel. On the second pass, I rubbed in the same direction (matron!) to get streaky burn-type effects.

And now a question: grille or no grille??

So far the opinion seems to be to include the grille – now I’ve just got to figure out how to attach it all on the inside …

[WIP] Mond ’48: Let there be light!

I’ve never lit a model before.

The concern about getting the electronics wired up correctly have always put me off before, but it’s a natural progression and from the examples I’ve seen adds a completely different dimension to a finished model. So, with this in mind, I want to do a simple lighting set up for the UFO in the Mond ’48 diorama.

I picked up a cheap and nasty-looking illuminated mobile from a local discount warehouse and set about extracting the LEDs from the horrible dragonfly things that they were stuck into. I managed to lose one of the five lights, but it left me with enough to be getting on with. I then snapped the mobile’s holder and freed all the cables and the battery pack.

I then cut out the bottom hatch of the UFO kit – I plan to use a vertical tube here to represent an airlock – which should hopefully hide the cabling in the finished diorama. The LEDs were then stuck into a cheap plastic cup to hold them in place and the kit dry-fitted to see what it might look like.

I have to say I was impressed – now to black and silver the inside of the kit and start to detail it.

[WIP] Mond ’48 UFO lands

The main kit for this build arrived yesterday – the Pegasus Hobby’s “Area 51 UFO”.

What a really simple kit: basically two saucer halves, plus the landing gear and green dome and windows.

Now, I’m sure there will be some modifications to the basic kit to make it more like something from 1948 and I want to light the central dome somehow. Time for some serious thinking …