Cylon Basestar

I’ve begun work on three significant improvements to the OS Monogram Cylon Basestar. This is actually the second time I’ve tried this—back in the early 1990s I attempted some rudimentary improvements while playing around with RTV and resin casting. Now that I am a fairly old hand (or at least old) at resin/RTV casting, I decided to give this old girl a new shot. While many consider this kit reasonably accurate for a subject that doesn’t have any decent references for beside screen shots, there is room for improvement. The three areas I choose for improvement are:

1) The outer launch bay trench “bridge”

2) The central column lack of details

3) The height to width proportions of the saucers

While making these improvements, I had to be aware of how much detail I could add. This kit has serious draft angle issues, and these limit how much detail the overall kit has. With the amount of detail I can get by freeze framing and zooming in on a good DVD shot, I could easily find and build a ton of detail into the upgrades. If I did that, though, it would be incongruous with the detail on the rest of the kit. So, I could have done more, but it would have looked odd on the kit. On the plus side, there is a lot of detail I can create using scribed geometric designs and simple geometric shapes cut from sheet styrene. One other benefit of the kit is the patterns on the kit repeat—each saucer is basically made up of 5 identical wedges. For each upgrade I make, I can cast either 5 or 10 parts from 1 master, and I’m done.

The original kit trench bridges are victims of one-sided molding—hollow on the underside, featureless on all vertical surfaces, missing details, and

though generally the right shape, have a few shape errors.

Completely bank vertical surfaces are due to the draft angle and mold release issue.

Using the kit trench bridge as a template, I scratchbuilt a more accurate bridge based on DVD screenshots. This was built up entirely by layering styrene sheets and shapes. The master was used to make an RTV mold, and ten copies were cast for the kit.

Some of the more obvious changes are the little ramps sticking out the backside, underside details and flattening the overall profile.

Note the new part looks tilted due to the asymmetrical underside detail.

Next on my list was the blank central column, or “apple core”. Again, and like the Galactica kit, vertical surfaces on the saucer interior are the victim of draft angle problems and are completely smooth. This area cries out most for attention; even if the other parts I'm fixing are poorly detailed, at least there is detail! The blank areas are highly visible, and that part of the ship has some fairly cool details, like hangar bay doors and some big cannon/missile launcher thing. Something had to be done...

I've had 3 of these kits, and the joint between the top and bottom saucers is usually warped, especially on older kits. I designed the parts to not only fill in detail but to cover up and fix the between-saucer seam. This resulted in a plate for the trench end wall (note hangar door near the narrow end), and 2 "belt" pieces to cover any gaps between the top and bottom end plates or the saucers. These parts were completely scratchbuilt based on DVD screenshots.

Idn’t dat purty? Drop these parts in place, and the most impossible seam to clean up simply goes away. Note how the belt pieces overlap the end pieces, covering up that seam as well!

The final and most challenging mod deals with the height to width of the kit. Simply put, the kit isn't wide enough, making it too tall. This was the hardest part to deal with, or even figure out. Based on screenshots from several perspectives, the kit diameter is about 14cm too narrow. The edge “detail”, for lack of a better word, is also pretty bad. The launch bay ramps not only don't line up in either direction, but are way too thick. The seam around the saucer rim is so bad it wasn't cleaned up for the promotional/box art pictures!

Great googily moogily, what a mess. You could spend the rest of your life on cleaning that up.

So, how to fix? From the calibrated eyeball view, making the rim 7cm longer from the center “moved” details like the trench bridges too far in. I compromised by settling on a 5cm extension. The extension is still in progress, but is designed to fit over some of the original detail. Since the original rim is so uneven, parts of it have to be removed (like the original launch bay ramps).

Clearly a lot of detail needs to be added. But, the new ramps are much sharper and accurate, and once done this should go a long way towards making this a truly awesome kit. Notice the new extension sticks out about as far as the original ramps and that will give an idea of the sizing.

This effort was originally started back in the summer of 2005. Since then, I completed everything but the edge extensions. As it turns out, Revell is re-releasing the 4 original series kits next year as part of the Galactica 30 year anniversary. This was announced late October, 2006 at the iHobby expo. Here is the flyer:

If you look in the lower left, there’s a Basestar kit with my mods! At least the trench bridge and “apple core” belt pieces I know for sure are mine. The upper trench pieces I did not do—quite frankly, from the topside DVD screenshots I have, the original pieces aren’t worth the effort to replace. I guess I’m flattered…