This is the Daedalus starship kit mastered and produced by April Welles of Cheetah Productions. The model is presented as an alternate take on Matt Jefferies original design, provides options for alternate placement of the nacelle struts, and enough decal options for a fleet of ships. You also have the option of painting the widows as is for a 1/1000 scale version, or filling in the windows and using the decals for a 1/650 version.

As with all resin kits, I cleaned the parts to remove mold release agent and attached parts with super glue. There are a few seams on the kit that need removed but a few minutes with a flexible sanding stick will make those disappear.

My intent was not to build a shipwreck, but the best laid plans often go awry. After cleaning up the parts I was drilling out the mounting holes for the struts. I was using a Dremel on low speed, and it slipped making a pretty good gouge in the hull. I thought about giving up, puttying the damage, or building a wreck. I opted for building the wreck. I continued to take the Dremel to the hull of the kit. I also carved away bits with a fresh Xacto blade. Once I was satisfied with the destruction of the secondary hull, I damaged the sphere.

I went back to the secondary hull this time hand drilling the pilot holes for the attachment points for the struts. The struts were attached with super glue and reinforced with baking soda. I left the bussard collectors off until the main parts of the model were painted. I cleaned up the baking soda/super glue joints, but it looked too clean for the wreck. Taking the Dremel once more I roughed up the joints.

The model was primed with Krylon and left to cure for a day. I painted the model in camouflage gray and the bussard collectors copper as they would be powered down. After a couple mist coats of gray and letting the paint dry it was time to weather. Black acrylic paint was flowed into the gouges, followed by dry brushing with silver.

The rest of the weathering was done with Doc Martens pastel dust in a variety of colors from blacks and grays to rust and grimy yellows. The engines were masked with post it notes and the pastels were applied for the vertical streaks. Decals were scraped with an Xacto blade. The tiny windows were inked with a tech pen.

I decided to model this ship as the U.E.S. Archon, and use the blue stripes. In my little world this was the original "Archon" from the original series that visited Landru, and as the Archon was not of the body, Landru had the ship destroyed. I'm not going to write a back story, so use your imagination.

I am happy with the results. It's no contest winner, but the CO.M.MI.E.S. (Colorado Modeling Militia Especially Sci Fi) have adopted the attitude of "finished is better than perfect." I was a little nervous to tell April what happened and show her pictures of a trashed out version of her first production kit, but she thought I did a good job and that meant a lot. In contrast my second Daedalus model will be a gleaming new version fresh out of space dock with the paint barely dry.

Image: Starboard side high

Image: Port side

Image: Dorsal view

Image: Ventral view

Image: In orbit