by Andrew Stanicek

"The time for our Rag Tag Fleet to stop running has come!"

With these words, the large drape was pulled and Admiral Adama announced the first in a new line of fighters to join the fighting force of the human race. Built aboard the recently reunited Battlestar Constellation, the "Assault Viper" shows marked improvements in overall performance, weapons load, speed, maneuverability, and avionics. In short, "...those Cylon Tin Cans finally have something to worry about!"

The Model

The Vipers, especially the MK-II's always reminded me of the F-4 Phantoms. When Monogram re-released their original Viper model, I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to end up with. Originally, I was going to use the nose from the Viper, and most of the rest of the ship would come from a 1:48th Phantom kit. But when I realized how nice this little kit was, I decided to use much more of the Viper, and still try to keep the styling cues from the Phantom. About 3/4 of the way through the build, it looked very back heavy, so a trip through my parts bin awarded me with the back half of my old Val Kilmer Batmobile, and the elevators from a 1:48 Russian Frog Foot. There is also new thrust vectoring nozzles that were built from scratch.

Very early in the build, I was thinking about displaying the fighter being prepped for launch. I always figured there must be some means of transporting the Vipers from the hanger deck to the launch tubes. An elevator just makes sense. I designed the elevator parts in Photoshop, borrowed some Death Star wall textures from SWMineratures.com for the inside walls, printed them out on 11"x17" paper, and spray glued them to some mat board. These were then built into an 11"x14" shadow box that became the base for the display.

The entire piece is lit with LED's (my first lighting project) and includes the marker lights around the base, blue inside the nose of the fighter, flashing yellow marker lights on the underside of the ship (courtesy of a 555 timer) The engines glow from three white LED's and a canibalized flickering tea light. The cockpit is illuminated by a green LED behind the pilots view screen, and an orange LED lighting several fiber optic strands that are fed into his control console.

I used both kit decals from the Phantom and the Viper, as well as home made decals for the digital camo pattern and some miscellaneous markings. I added some battle damage with match heads and a soldering iron. Everything was blended together with some airbrush work, Tamiya weathering pastels, and my INKTense colored pencils.

Also, thank you to the very generous member of the SSM forums who donated the deck crew. A fresh coat of paint, and they added the perfect finishing touch to this display.

Image: Cockpit closeup

Image: Deck crew

Image: Top view

Image: Right side

Image: Right/front

Image: Underneath

Image: Weapons