Battlestar Galactica Gemini Freighter (enhanced and retextured)

Revell-Fan

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Hello, fellow warriors!

This is my Gemini Freighter from the BSG ship pack. The plans are available in the BSG downloads section. I scaled them up by 50 % to make her 43 cm long. She is a real beauty. You really have to look twice to see that this is a paper model and not a smaller version of the actual studio model used in the series (I guess my model is half as big as the studio model). I thought it would be a quick "after work build" - till I encountered some severe felgercarb which had to be corrected.
 

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Revell-Fan

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This thread will be a little longer than my previous ones because it contains detailed descriptions of my build. I hope you find it as entertaining as informative though. So get a sandwich and a big cup of coffee and make yourself comfortable.

I started with the central cylinder. It looks a bit like Harry Potter's magic wand before the mounting clamps are attached. I inserted a rolled up A4 page which gives additional strength.

The mounting arms (MA) were heavily modified. The instructions show some very funky foldings. I rearranged them and glued the front and back pieces to 2 mm cardboard to make them stronger. Both halfs were then connected by those blue gray "outer hull wrap pieces". I was a bit afraid of attaching them to the central core, but Steve's tip - to work on a flat surface - was excellent.
 

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Revell-Fan

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Chief Tyrol to the rescue! (Parts obviously compromised by Cylon agents.)
 

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Revell-Fan

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Printed and assembled again. Now it looks better. Well, at least this proves two things:
1st: I am NOT a Cylon (coz I had NO plan) and
2nd: you shouldn't build a model past midnight...
 

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Revell-Fan

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Who needs Scorpion shipyards when you have this state-of-the-art drydock at home?
 

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Revell-Fan

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Texture error #1: Part A9 is supposed to be another engine exhaust but it is completely coloured rust brown. I corrected this. In addition, I created some additional housing parts to make the exhaust vents thinner and to give them some depth.
 

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Revell-Fan

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Positioning parts A10 was tricky. I glued them to a 0,75 mm thick cardboard and attached them to parts A3 and A4. The paper plans simplify the actual structure here. If you want to be more true to the original, you have to glue another part between parts A2 and A3. Unfortunately I noticed this after I had already assembled the main parts of the engine, so I had to improvise a bit. If you use this new part, parts A10 become obsolete. Glue this part to cardboard (front AND back side) and then to part A3.
 

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Revell-Fan

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New bullets for Kara Thrace. 36 mm. Ideal for daggit hunting on Aerilon.
 

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Revell-Fan

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There is a part missing: F9 sits on an elevated base.

F6 also has a texture error.
 

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Revell-Fan

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The head got a neck piece which you can easily spot on the ZOIC Gemini renders. The single parts were glued to cardboard and assembled as shown.
 

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Revell-Fan

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The cheek rockets got some wheels. They have to be glued to cardboard.
 

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Revell-Fan

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BG / UG 1-6 were glued to 0,75 mm thick cardboard to make them thicker. I borrowed the back side from a misprint of the Pylon Vessel. They also got another part, a small dome. Only the TOS Gemini features these domes, the ZOIC version has flat BG parts.
 

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Revell-Fan

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Afraid of small parts? Please note that this is the BIG version... Don't sneeze!
 

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Revell-Fan

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Then it struck me. There was another texture error, and this one was much graver than the missing engine: The markings are wrong!

The mesh and the overall textures were so great that I didn't notice this while printing. So what to do? I had two options: Making the containers again or glueing the corrected panels over the existing structure. I chose the latter to save time and ink.

Please note that I am talking about the markings, not the colour. The colour seems acceptable to me even if the classic Gemini looks faded and grey-brown on screen. Many miniatures suffered from desaturation during post production back "in the old days" (most famous examples: the green TOS Enterprise, the egg-blue Enterprise D, the blue Voyager and the yellow DS9 which all appear grey; there are even some shots of the TOS Galactica in which her red markings are dark grey). You may argue that the ZOIC Gemini is darker, too, and you are right. However, if I had altered the colour, I would have had to start my build all over again.

As you can see, the ZOIC texture differs from the Apogee paint job, so that there are two canon versions of the same ship (plus a third very small one from the Buck Rogers episode "Space Vampire").
 

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Revell-Fan

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Final assembly was straight forward and easy, as the following pictures illustrate.

If only anything was that simple...!
 

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Revell-Fan

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The tiny pipes on the side canisters are Ovion legs. Well, not really. Since all flights to Carillon had been cancelled (officially because of "heavy snowfall") I had to improvise again: Curtain needles bent and cut to shape and then painted.
 

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Revell-Fan

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I added some rails, too. And no, no-one forced me to cut off the dark grey areas...
 

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Revell-Fan

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Last but not least an industrial-style stand ...
 

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Revell-Fan

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... et voilà!
 

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