Babylon 5 Starfury Mark I

I love Babylon 5. I think it’s the best thing ever to be shown on TV. It’s that cool. Naturally, when I started collecting model kits, I made sure I had Babylon 5 kits. Since there were only 2 mass market kits produced from the show, Babylon 5 Station and the Starfury, it wasn’t hard to complete my collection. Now I hunt garage kits from the series and have done quite well in my collecting.

I’m very fond of the Starfury. I like that the pilot stands. I like that it’s utilitarian and has appropriate thrusters and thrust adjusters. The Revell kit is pretty accurate to the CGI models of the show, and right on with the Babylon 5 Technical manual. The basic kit came with decals and painting guides for four different Starfury designs, Ivonova’s, Omega Squadron, Generic, and Presidential Escort. I chose the latter.

I made one big blunder in assembling the kit. I failed to put on the upper gun emplacement before attaching the wing. I had already glued, puttied the attached wing before I notice it. I was unable to attach the gun as it should be, try as I might, I finally had to put the gun in a horizontal configuration. It works, but it’s wrong. Luckily I have a few more kits to get it right.

I mixed my own color with Liquitex Basic Acrylics. I mixed silver in with the gray trying to get more of a metallic color. This was before I found Liquitex Iridescent tinting Medium. I think the color came out all right. The blue was done the same way, a mixed color with a splash of metallic. I went with a darker, deeper blue as depicted on the box. I thought it looked more Presidential than the light baby blue on the decals. I got my blue, but when I applied the decals, the baby blue strips look a little out of place. I guess after the death of President Santiago, the escorts kinda' lost interest in upkeep of their fighters.

I painted the steel pieces Ral Partha Steel with an airbrush. I don’t think I’ll shoot miniature paints through my airbrush again. Just not made for it. It’s like sucking tapioca through a straw.

I messed up a few decals, wing refueling ports mostly, but it doesn't detract anything form the kit. I got the big ones on where they belonged. I weathered the kit with streaks of soot. Unlike my Maquis ship or Viper, I kept this to a minimum. It worked really well to tie in the Steel exhaust ports with the rest of the ship.

I used a green interior, because I found that somewhere but when I see the show now, all I see are red cockpits. Damn. I’m very experienced in painting miniature figures. See my WH40K page for more on this. My Starfury pilot was an exquisite piece. I didn’t use the face decal for the helmet (I think it’s a picture of JM Stracynski, creator of B5) but used a very bright metallic gold. Then I did an amateur move that still pisses me off. I attached the clear canopy with CA glue. Cyanoacrylate or super glue clouds clear pieces and shows off every flaw and finger print. If there are no flaws or fingerprints, it just makes a mess. Thus my shameful canopy covers up my cool pilot and mars one of my favorite models. Live and learn.

I painted the base a mixture of the blue and gray of the ship and left it unadorned for now.