robiwon

Thanks for all the comments guys, appreciate it! A few more lighting tests. Starting to look good! Also, a picture on how I did the engine lights. Engine lights. Tamiya paint cap, 12 LEDs in total. It has 8 flickering blues and 4 steady whites in the center. She's almost ready for paint!

Daughter and grandson doing dishes, lol...

Engine test on the Galactica.

Next project moving on to the bench after the Big G is done will be the Moebius 18 inch Jupiter 2 kit. I picked up this sealed kit at our last club meeting for $40. What can I say? I like BIG models!

Quick lighting test. Looking good!

Thanks! I did a quick lighting test this morning using a flashlight shinning on the fibers, Whoo-Hoo it's going to look great! But didn't have time to upload the pics. before heading to work. I'll post them tonight.

All the fiber work is done. 300+ windows. Both .5mm and .25mm fiber was used. Fibers are all bundled up and trimmed. Now to install the electronics!! Bridge with .25mm fiber. Mike's replacement launch tubes in place. Much better than stock.

Got some more work done on the Big Girl. Starting to run fibers in the head. Got the gap under the bridge squared away with Aves epoxy. More fibers to run and then even more fibers to run!!!

Nice job so far. Didn't realize a kit existed of this yet.

This is a resin kit made by Mike Salzo. You can find him on FB and scifi forums like the RPF. Drilled about 150 holes for fiber the other day. Still need to drill another 200 or so. The ship will be lit with .5mm fiber optics. Picture taken at last weekends meeting of the Kentucky Modelers group. It was a big hit to mostly car modelers!

I'll post some more pics after work today. Spent last evening drilling windows. The windows are .5mm for fiber optics to light them. I got the port side done and part of the top, drilled about 150 windows, still need to do about another 200. I'll then start running the .5mm fiber optics.

It's a very well designed kit. A joy to work on. The ship is generally accepted to be about a mile long, give or take...

It's about 1/2000 scale, give or take, based on how big one believes the "actual" ship was. Total length of this model is 37.5 inches long, just over 3 feet!!

A little something I've been working on. Taking this to a local meet this weekend here in KY, probably spend the day drilling windows and BSing... Going to see how well this works on resin. I'll bring a few fresh batteries with me!

Thanks again everyone for the comments. I'm mainly a sci-fi guy but dabble with cars now and then. Those perfect glossy paint jobs just kill me! Yu dot need that with sci-fi, lol...

Thanks guys. Looking forward to starting on the street version. Probably wont be built as Bond's car though, don't need two white Esprit's!

If you look at the 3rd picture, you will see the dash is the same on both sides. You would only need to fill a very small hole on the right and cut a matching on the left and relocate the parking brake. I may do this myself.

Monogram made the Turbo Esprit and is a very nice kit, but no V8

I was quite surprised at the shipping time for this. The Bond car took a full month to arrive. But in fairness that was in December, so the holiday rush was on.

After hearing that Fujimi was releasing an all new tool of James Bond's Lotus Esprit sub from the movie "The Spy Who Loved Me" I jumped on the pre-order. That was last summer. The Sub kit was released in December and I spent a month or so working on it. Around the same time Fujimi then announced they would be doing a street version of the same car! That was great news as no current kit exists of the original first generation Esprit except for some older Japanese kits that fetch upwards of $100 on eBay. I again jumped on the pre-order list. The kit was released last week, middle of February. It arrived from HLJ just 4 days after leaving Japan. Again, this is an all new tool of the Lotus Esprit S1, based on the original release of the James Bond version. It is NOT a re-pop of the old Nichimo or Entex kits. Like all others, it is a curbside kit with no engine. Unlike the others, it does have a nicely engraved chassis plate with separate front and rear suspension (steerable front wheels) and exhaust components(chromed). Like the Bond version, it is also right hand drive. However, do to the design of the dash board, converting to left hand drive would be a relatively simple affair I think. The kit includes some window masks to help with painting the front windshield and small rear window in the cockpit. That was a nice touch. The satin chrome wheels are nice. The chrome around the very thin edges of the wheel lips had rubbed off in a few spots though. An easy fix. The tires are generic no names and are hollow rubber, instead of the typical solid rubber tires typically found in kits All of the kit parts are otherwise very, very nice. Like the sub, all clear lenses have a chrome reflector behind them. This version does include tiny side maker lights for the front and rear finders. These do not have chrome reflectors though. The body is very crisp and no flash was found on the parts. There are better pictures of the sprues online, but here is what I took. for you guys. I'll be starting the build soon. Hopefully, Fujimi will entertain us with a Turbo Esprit edition in the future. If not, I have already put a bug in the ear of my favorite 3D printer artist on Shapeways... Enjoy...

It was a '76 and had a 4 cylinder. The V8 did not come out until 1996 in the redesigned Peter Stevens bodywork.

Thanks for all the comments. It was a fun build and cant wait to dig into the street version. I would grab this soon if you guys want one. I see the prices on ebay are shooting up. Some are over $60! I got mine from HLJ for about half that price!

I did an unboxing with all the sprues laid out on some FB model car groups last night. I'll post those pics up here after work today. This is definitely not a repop of the Nichimo kit. This is an all new tool from Fujimi. The Nichimo was motorized and had an opening rear hatch. This has a much better detailed curbside chassis with separate, and nice looking, suspension parts and separate chrome exhaust. I'll do an unboxing thread separate from this one tonight. Bottom line, don't bother chasing down the Nichimo anymore unless you just want a nostalgia kit and paying $75 and up for it. This kit is far superior and was only a total of $38 shipped (!) from Japan.

Oh, and look what just came today! It only shipped last Saturday! It made it from Japan to KY in 4 days!!!!!

Just finished the new Fujimi version of James Bond's Lotus Esprit sub. It's an excellent kit. Only downside is there is no base included. For me, I used the base from my Bandai Millennium Falcon kit. Covered in model railroad sand, painted with a plaster rock added it went from a desert to the bottom of the ocean look! A street version was just released last week. I have one in the mail and should get it in a few weeks from HLJ.