Moebius Viper MKII

I recently finished building the Moebius Viper MKII kit, and while I didn’t document anything about the process I still want to make some notes about it for future reference. Like most Moebius kits it has a pretty good level of detail for the scale; I took on a little extra challenge with it by adding some lighting for the engines and the cockpit. Overall I’m happy with how it turned out; there are a lot of technique and equipment firsts with this kit, and it was good practice for the next one I have waiting!

Assembly & Electronics

The assembly itself was fairly straightforward, everything fit together pretty well. I had to make a few minor modifications to fit the electronics for the lighting; unfortunately I don’t have any photos of that. The lights are powered off a tiny drone LiPo battery tucked into the front section, with a switch and charging port hidden inside the front landing leg bay. Space was a bit tight around the switch – there’s a peg just above it for joining the two halves of the body together, and working around that was a challenge! If I were doing it over again I’d probably consider just removing that peg altogether, and also use thinner wires since what I had lying around was a little difficult to bend around everything.

I used 4 white LEDs in total; one in each of the engines and one for the cockpit, just behind the seat headrest. There’s a small plate in front of the cockpit light so I drilled a few tiny holes in it to try and let the light through, but it didn’t work quite as well as I was hoping. I think the cockpit light would have been better off being underneath the whole seat assembly. For the engine lights, I 3D printed some small cones to fit inside the engine parts and glued the lights into one end. I glued small circles of plastic that were painted transparent red on the other end to give the engine light a more realistic-feeling colour – this setup actually worked really well. Ideally I would have liked to seal some of the seams between parts a little better since there are places where obvious light is leaking out, but it’s relatively minor and not really a problem when the lights aren’t on!

Painting & Decals

Although the kit was all white plastic, I still completely sanded and re-painted the entire thing in white to both get rid of the just-plastic finish and even out any artifacts from manufacturing. I looked up some reference images for the various detail colours, but in the end I decided on more “retro” look for both the ship and some pilot detail. Most of the references had the exposed mechanical detail done in mostly silver/chrome, which although potentially more accurate felt a little too plain to me – I used a metallic nickel as a base for the metal parts and accented certain sections with either copper or brass. This colour scheme feels like it fits better with the sci-fi look used at the time when the original show was airing.

I decided to try out some heat discolouration for the engines, both to get a more realistic look and so that they wouldn’t just be a plain metal colour. I think this might have worked a little better with an airbrush, but I hadn’t bought my first one yet and in any case I’d probably want a little more practice before trying this sort of thing. It turned out pretty well with semi-dry brushing so I’m pleased with the look.

The kit provided a LOT of decals that really helped bring the whole thing together. I upped my game this time and used decal fixing and softening solutions, and found out that it’s apparently the key to decal application that I’ve been missing this whole time. The softening solution in particular makes everything look so much more realistic and part of the model, instead of stickers just slapped on – I’m sure a lot of model makers out there could have told me that!

Weathering

Having never actually weathered a model before (I didn’t even know it was a thing when I was younger), or really done much weathering at all, I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out. I’m not too disappointed with it but I do think that I went a little too heavy with some things, especially the “scrapes” on the red decals. Another issue with those is the colour; the body was painted with a white gloss spray can, but I did the scratches with a white acrylic and they’re not QUITE the same shade. From a distance it doesn’t look too bad, but up close you can kind of see the transition.

The general dirt might also be a bit too much, although I don’t mind that nearly as much since it blends in and looks appropriate a lot more than the issues with the white – I figure a spaceship that’s constantly in use will probably get a bit dirty. I went a lot lighter with some silver scratching and I’m much happier with that. The blast marks were also a first for me and overall I think they turned out ok; there’s one on the wing top that isn’t as great but it still works.

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