BSG Colonial One : Modeling the Presidential Ship

I'm back ... and its rather embarrassing too. I lost my Internet access ... or so I thought, for almost six days. The lights on the phone line disappeared and I thought the phone lines were the problem. Had to schedule the wireman to come today (Saturday) as it was the only day I would be home for this, and after checking the wiring in the house and my net set up, he looked at me funny. He just switched the phone plug ins on my new modem and whalla ......... now I shall go hide my face in a bin somewhere. Problem was I really had no idea how you set that darn thing up. So much for being the handy man in the house. And yeah, my wife is still laughing over this.

OK, that was written this afternoon, and I'm done hiding, so I'm back with today's topic, The Presidential ship in the new Battlestar Galactica, the Colonial One. This ship is truly uniquely designed, showcasing curves that are rather aerodynamic (I guess she has to since this craft has interplanetary travel capabilities) and what I found interesting was that the colour schematics chosen for the ship really reflect present Earth's United States Air Force One.

I had been meaning to cover this ship earlier on and I do know a few modelers looking for one in 1/4105 scale as a companion to Moebius's Galactica kit.

This ship was of course a CGI creation throughout the series and its amazing how they made her look so workable. I particularly love the narrow bridge section and the tail rudders do remind me of the Starfuries from Babylon 5 - a nice addition. Overall she looks like something out of the ocean, graceful, and yet commands a very authoritative presence.

In terms of available kits, besides the Titanium Series Die Cast, only Starcraft Models came out with one, and a spectacular kit she was. She come in rotocast resin in 1/200 scale, hollow and has 28 pieces, meaning the kit is lightweight and ready for lighting. She's pretty big too, measuring about 17" long when completed, and comes with an instruction sheet and decals.

Unfortunately I believe this kit is already out of production, and you'd be lucky if you could find an original owner willing to part with her. Otherwise, its off to eBay. I managed to get some good images of the kit from Starfleet Models in case you're curious how she looks like.

I have only seen a few build ups for this kit, and the one build that still stays in my mind today is this one, build up by Douglas Shortes (dbhs modeler).  Douglas really did a wonderful job to an already magnificent kit and he literally brought her to life. Here are some sample of his work. More images are available over at modelermagic.com