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Though I haven't seen the show in years- and I'm sure it doesn't hold up well at all, I used to watch Buck Rogers in the 25th Century when I was a kid. I never liked the Draconian Hatchet fighter, but I did like the Earth Defense Directorate "Thunder" Starfighter. I had a kit of the fighter years and years ago, but eventually it fell apart and got round-filed. This was unfortunate, since I could have easily salvaged the kit and saved myself the pain of paying ten times the original price for a replacement. Anyway, I spotted this Tsukuda release on a shelf in a hobby store on my last trip to Japan. I picked it up for $30, which is still expensive, but generally about half the going price on eBay.
This kit was rediculously simple. There was only about 16 pieces, the largest of which were the top and bottom halves of the main fuselage. Since this is a 80's kit of a sci fi subject, detail on the cockpit is virtually non-existent, however, the exterior details are spot-on so far as I can tell. Not being able to build the kit straight out of the box, I decided to scratchbuild a landing skid for the ship. I used several lenghts and diameters of brass and plastic tubes, and a few chunks of thicker sheet styrene to come up with something that looked similar to the construction diagrams for the fighter I've seen online. I had to saw open the underside of the fuselage to create the gear doors, but that was fairly simple. The plastic was thick, though, so it made the task kind of tedious.
The kit comes with only 4 decals- two Earth Defense Directorate roundels and a pair of rainbow bars for the engine housings. These decals were about 20 years old, but had not yellowed, which was a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, they were so thick that they wouldn't snug down over the surface of the kit, even with Super-sol. I had to peel them all off and repaint the areas where they'd been sitting. Replacement decals, printed by JT Graphics, were purchased from Federation Models. These went on smoothly and without a hitch.
It turns out that I painted the cockpit interior incorrectly. For some reason, I remembered it as being off white and grey, when in reality, it was dark grays and black. At least, the screen shots I've seen online suggest as much. Since the kit was already half painted by the time I realized this, I just let it go.
