History Brief

The Cylon Raider is a space superiority fighter. This modern Raider is the CGI version designed by Eric Chu used in the re-imagined television series. Called Sparrow by the Colonial pilots, these were first encountered 40 years after the first Cylon War. This thing is a living biomechanical being, spacecraft and pilot rolled into one; truly a strange nemesis.

The Product

It’s a prebuilt and fully finished kit ready to display. It’s packaged in a colorful box that’s representative of space flight. The model is accurate, nicely done, and looks pretty decent for a pre-built. It has a very nice old-school 2-piece display stand that needs assembly. However, I found this type of display stand to be unbalanced and wobbly for this application.

The Bottom Line

My wife, who is a huge BSG fan, loves this thing. Two thumbs up. Thanks to Moebius and IPMS/USA for the review opportunity.

The Aircraft

The B-52 has been flying longer than a lot of IPMS members have been building. It entered USAF service in 1955, and 85 of them are still in active inventory, with 9 in reserve. The combat-ready B-52Hs left are at Minot AFB in North Dakota and Barksdale AFB, Louisiana.

The Scale Aircraft Conversions set

The SAC set for the B-52 consists of 4 identical main gear sets and two outrigger wheels and struts for the wings, all in white metal. The outriggers are cast with a protective sprue, which is a great idea since they’d be a little fragile.

The main gear uses the kit wheels.

Painting

This was pretty simple. The main gear and the outriggers are painted white. I used Floquil Reefer White, which goes on nicely from the airbrush and sticks wonderfully to the metal parts. I then brush-painted the wheels on the outriggers with Floquil Grimy Black.

Dragon's latest Stug III release is marketed as a December ‘44 production time frame version. If you follow the instructions, you won't build a vehicle from the Dec 44 production run, but a somewhat jumbled mix with early, mid, and late production features. Fortunately, if you know what you are looking for, the kit includes the parts to build what is commonly accepted as a late ‘44/early 45 vehicle. With some exceptions.

The parts are molded in light gray styrene with crisp details and no noticeable flash. There are some very fine details like the fender tread pattern, hull weld beads, and rough texture on the cast mantle (Topfblende). This release is a bit of a mix-and-match from their earlier StuG III releases (notably the CH May ‘44 Mid-Late Production) with a few additional sprues from their StuG IV kits. A good portion of these parts won't be used and are blued out on the front instruction sheet. But don't be too hasty, you'll need some of those pieces.