Here's part 4 of detailing and accurizing your Moebius Galactica, emphasizing on the Garage Section or Recess area where the flight pods go in when the Galactica engages her FTL engines.
First thing to note is that the flight pods on the Moebius kit cannot retract into the garage area, not without altering/cutting off a section of the arms. In reality, the actual Galactica would not have been able to retract her flight pods completely in as well as the size of her main fuselage are too small to accommodate both flight pods. Thanks to the "miracles" of CGI, anything became possible.
However, with a working representation of the new Galactica in the form of a plastic kit (resin as well abet harder to see this with resin kits), the truth finally comes out. Of course that's not going to stop any scale modelers from building one that way. It will just become another challenge of sorts to build the flight pod retracted, though I've yet to see anyone build one that way ..... yet. So what are the fixes needed for this section?
Garage Fitting Issue
You will notice that when you test fit the garage area into the "joined" fuselage, the parts don't exactly fit snugly into place. There will be a noticeable gap surrounding the fittings and the gaps are quite noticeable.
This is easily solved by sanding/filing down the triangle shaped piece behind the garage. Those pieces apparently are a little too thick to fit in snugly within their holders.
There will still be a small gap present but its easier to hide these later with some putty.
Detailing the Garage/Recess Area
Here's one area that got many modeler's stump, including myself. How do you detail the garage/recess area. The Moebius kit's garage area is simply a smooth surface without any patterns whatsoever, and that's because the kit was designed using ZOICs images that had no patterns on that area, hence the dilemma.
Both Acreation Models and Paragrafix offered after market fixes for these areas but before those became available, I spent like nearly 1.5 months trying to come up with a styrene sheet alternative, only to come out of 7 unsuccessful attempts and wasting lots of styrene sheets. I just couldn't keep up with all those miniature holes I had to cut straight.
The patterns inside the garage area suggest a working environment and the patterns repeat themselves from the mid section.
No one captured this perfectly like Cobywan's Scratch Build Galactica, where he provided the best example yet of how the recess area really looks like.
And I see Marko's creative attempt at emulating this without resorting to decals or PE set. Here he tries to modify the hangar housing to raise the arm attachment.
Marko test fit the parts and found that he had to make some correction to the shape of the arms as well as reposition and reattach the hangar pods to fit
He then uses a drill to re-create the garage patterns and did a wonderful job creating the Viper Launch Tubes on the Flight Pod
He later added some scribed panel lines as well as adding in some exterior panel details in between the ribs.
Photoetch (PE) and Decals Alternative
Of course in terms of simplicity, many modelers had depended on Acreation Model's Decals to give that area a busy look. The original decals looked like the below image and was announced by Acreation Models that its not an accurate representation but more to give that area a busy outlook.
With a new PE set coming forth from Paragrafix that will give the recess area a more accurate representation of the designs found there (emulating Cobywan's work on his design), Acreation Models have agreed to develop a new set of decals to compliment the PE set. Both sets will be ready soon, and the new PE set can be pre-ordered HERE
Please note that free replacement Acreation Models decal for the garage/recess area is only possible if you had bought the earlier set from either Acreations Models, Starship Modeler, Starfleet Models and CultTVman Hobbyshop. You may require to top up the shipping however.
Lighting the Garage/Recess Area
The best lighted Moebius Galactica kit I've seen is that done up by Cylon75. Since I'm no electronic Guru, I can't go into details on how he did his, which wire went where, LED voltage calculations, etc etc. I'd rather have something that's plug and play.
But here's how Cylon75 hot wired his Galactica's Garage/Recess area:
There's actually 6 red lights running through the top of the Garage roof but due to the size of a 1/4105 scale kit, this may be difficult to emulate. Cylon75's achievement here shows that two red LED may be all that's needed. Of course we haven't seen one with 6 red LEDs there yet to ascertain if the lights will be too bright.
The lights can be obtained from Madman Lighting, who have come up with a nice affordable lighting set specifically for your Galactica kit. All you need is a wire wrapping tool, no soldering or electronic degree required.
More on Accurizing and Detailing your Moebius Galactica at
ADMG Part 1 - Intro to Accurizing and Detailing your Moebius Galactica
ADMG Part 2 - Accurizing/Detailing the Alligator Head Section
ADMG Part 3 - Accurizing/Detailing the Flight Pods
ADMG Part 4 - Accurizing/Detailing the Garage/Recess Section
ADMG Part 5 - Accurizing/Detailing the Main Hull
ADMG Part 6 - Lighting up the Moebius Galactica
ADMG Part 7 - Painting your Moebius Galactica
First thing to note is that the flight pods on the Moebius kit cannot retract into the garage area, not without altering/cutting off a section of the arms. In reality, the actual Galactica would not have been able to retract her flight pods completely in as well as the size of her main fuselage are too small to accommodate both flight pods. Thanks to the "miracles" of CGI, anything became possible.
However, with a working representation of the new Galactica in the form of a plastic kit (resin as well abet harder to see this with resin kits), the truth finally comes out. Of course that's not going to stop any scale modelers from building one that way. It will just become another challenge of sorts to build the flight pod retracted, though I've yet to see anyone build one that way ..... yet. So what are the fixes needed for this section?
Garage Fitting Issue
You will notice that when you test fit the garage area into the "joined" fuselage, the parts don't exactly fit snugly into place. There will be a noticeable gap surrounding the fittings and the gaps are quite noticeable.
This is easily solved by sanding/filing down the triangle shaped piece behind the garage. Those pieces apparently are a little too thick to fit in snugly within their holders.
There will still be a small gap present but its easier to hide these later with some putty.
Detailing the Garage/Recess Area
Here's one area that got many modeler's stump, including myself. How do you detail the garage/recess area. The Moebius kit's garage area is simply a smooth surface without any patterns whatsoever, and that's because the kit was designed using ZOICs images that had no patterns on that area, hence the dilemma.
Both Acreation Models and Paragrafix offered after market fixes for these areas but before those became available, I spent like nearly 1.5 months trying to come up with a styrene sheet alternative, only to come out of 7 unsuccessful attempts and wasting lots of styrene sheets. I just couldn't keep up with all those miniature holes I had to cut straight.
The patterns inside the garage area suggest a working environment and the patterns repeat themselves from the mid section.
No one captured this perfectly like Cobywan's Scratch Build Galactica, where he provided the best example yet of how the recess area really looks like.
And I see Marko's creative attempt at emulating this without resorting to decals or PE set. Here he tries to modify the hangar housing to raise the arm attachment.
Marko test fit the parts and found that he had to make some correction to the shape of the arms as well as reposition and reattach the hangar pods to fit
He then uses a drill to re-create the garage patterns and did a wonderful job creating the Viper Launch Tubes on the Flight Pod
He later added some scribed panel lines as well as adding in some exterior panel details in between the ribs.
Photoetch (PE) and Decals Alternative
Of course in terms of simplicity, many modelers had depended on Acreation Model's Decals to give that area a busy look. The original decals looked like the below image and was announced by Acreation Models that its not an accurate representation but more to give that area a busy outlook.
With a new PE set coming forth from Paragrafix that will give the recess area a more accurate representation of the designs found there (emulating Cobywan's work on his design), Acreation Models have agreed to develop a new set of decals to compliment the PE set. Both sets will be ready soon, and the new PE set can be pre-ordered HERE
Please note that free replacement Acreation Models decal for the garage/recess area is only possible if you had bought the earlier set from either Acreations Models, Starship Modeler, Starfleet Models and CultTVman Hobbyshop. You may require to top up the shipping however.
Lighting the Garage/Recess Area
The best lighted Moebius Galactica kit I've seen is that done up by Cylon75. Since I'm no electronic Guru, I can't go into details on how he did his, which wire went where, LED voltage calculations, etc etc. I'd rather have something that's plug and play.
But here's how Cylon75 hot wired his Galactica's Garage/Recess area:
There's actually 6 red lights running through the top of the Garage roof but due to the size of a 1/4105 scale kit, this may be difficult to emulate. Cylon75's achievement here shows that two red LED may be all that's needed. Of course we haven't seen one with 6 red LEDs there yet to ascertain if the lights will be too bright.
The lights can be obtained from Madman Lighting, who have come up with a nice affordable lighting set specifically for your Galactica kit. All you need is a wire wrapping tool, no soldering or electronic degree required.
More on Accurizing and Detailing your Moebius Galactica at
ADMG Part 1 - Intro to Accurizing and Detailing your Moebius Galactica
ADMG Part 2 - Accurizing/Detailing the Alligator Head Section
ADMG Part 3 - Accurizing/Detailing the Flight Pods
ADMG Part 4 - Accurizing/Detailing the Garage/Recess Section
ADMG Part 5 - Accurizing/Detailing the Main Hull
ADMG Part 6 - Lighting up the Moebius Galactica
ADMG Part 7 - Painting your Moebius Galactica
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