Accurizing the Testors Roswell UFO (long)(funny)

[GRBroman]

Accurizing the Testors 1/48 Roswell UFO
Edited by Glen Broman
Contributors: Stanley Roberts, Marc Berzikity ( Innocent Bystander),
Frank Henriquez and Ruediger Landmann
Testors recently released the new Roswell UFO in 1/48. It's a real
beauty, but there are a few things those of us on The Project have done to
accurize the kit. There has also been a fair amount of debate on the
Internet as of late on the correct cockpit colors, camouflage and markings
of both the military and civilian versions. There are several excellent
references available. For colors I strongly recommend the IPMS Mars Color
Guide. They guys really know their stuff and have put together an
excellent book with slick holographic paint chips. What is really useful to
the modeler are the cross references to the changes in the GS (Galactic
Standard) paint charts over the years. Another good reference is the
recently declassified Detail and Scale. One of the really difficult
problems for the average modeler is trying to determine the actual colors
from some of the early fuzzy color photos and movies. Trying to determine
colors from the early photos was really nerve wracking, especially as you
never knew what was color shift and what was the result of color on
primitive orthochromatic film. As you have no doubt noticed, many of them
are also very fuzzy, a result of the photographers starting to pee circles
around themselves every time they saw a plain old flying saucer. I have
some great shots that I took back in the 70's when I first started working
at Dreamland that have been a tremendous in recreating the markings on the
Roswell UFO. I understand that the markings were recently translated and
appear to read "Bite me Bert." The significance of this is unknown at this
time. Well, since it is now definitely known that the "visitors" preferred
to use commercial space vehicles to visit earth, I would go with the decal
sheets from Liveries Unlimited. My favorite is the sporty pink and green
of "Puffda Spaceways". I do find the shape of the spacecraft a little
disconcerting though. Anyway, True Details has some really nice resin
bulged landing pads and vacuform pod covers. Their cockpit detail set is
too "soft" though. Airwaves is much better and captures the look of the
thermodynamic defribulator levers so much better in PE than the resin blobs
in the other set. The stuff that Eduard markets to replicate the space
slime used to weather the internal panel lines is really nice, but I found
that boogers look the same and are much cheaper. One problem I, and
several others, have noticed is that Testors has apparently added some of
the details from the "reverse-engineered" version that is now in the
museum at Dreamland. It was an error reminiscent of Tamiya's use of the
Cosford Meteor to create their Mark I molds. Annoying, but understandable.
By the way, if you ever happen to be passing through Area 51 on business,
I recommend stopping off at the Dreamland Museum. Really excellent
displays, plan on a little extra time as the fifteen security level checks
can take awhile ( I swear that the guy who does the body cavity search can
palm a basketball). Anyway, back to the cockpit. Add a blue luminescent
panel to give the right glow if you are modeling it in flight mode, or use
a wash of WWII RAF Azure Blue if you don't want to do the wiring. (If you
build it "under investigation" don't forget the "Kilroy was here" over the
door on the inside. People still talk about how old Dr. Huer blew his stack
over that appearing right before the committee visit). If you decide to do
the Museum version, FS colors were used, sort of. They put some additives
in to make the paint stick to the assemblies they had transplanted whole
from the wreck to the prototype, this skewed the colors a little bit. For
the floors, flat black to simulate the rubberized floor covering works. For
the walls and control panel boxes, use FS 36176 (with a few drops of FS
35414 - I found that three drops in 2 ml was enough to give me a good
match). The panel fronts were either flat black or bare metal (Model Master
Aluminum worked for me). The seats were the red leatherette. The control
joysticks had electrical tape wrapped around them, it is not plastic
handles even though it looks like that in the photos. The big display, when
off, looked like an old TV screen, sort of a glossy German field gray, when
on, it depended what it was doing, of course. Chrome the exterior (let me
know if you figure out a way to add the blue tinge, I've tried mixes and
washes but nothing really works, I always fall back on a light with a blue
filter for the display, metallic blue for the honeycomb if in flight. If
you want to build them landed, you have to go the stretched sprue and
cardstock route to get the leg webbing. I did the seat supports for the
Sportster from stretched sprue and some pieces from a tiny LEM kit. The
Testors Roswell UFO seems to depict a mishmash of the JD 75,099.4 prototype
designed to scare the feces out of the natives and a more recent production
variant used by gray gang members to...well, scare the feces out of the
natives. The Testors model lacks the fuzzy tesseracts that levitate over
the rear view scanner and the man-with-its-head-on-a-spring. Testors also
seems to have screwed up the dimensionality of the hyperdrive motivator
unit (part 15). The real thing is folded over into 10 dimensions, while
Testors only molded 5. This makes the part both physically and temporally
slippery. If your kit is missing the part, no need to call Testors for a
replacement; just wait a while (a week more or less) and it'll reappear. By
the way, the interior is Aotake only in the JD 75,099 - JD 975,000 units.
UFOs from JD 975000 to JD 2200000 used RLM 66 and interior quaddimesional
gray. The UFO depicted by Testors has been seen with black velvet interior
flocking and padded control columns. Actually custom interiors are not at
all uncommon on UFOs of this type as many have been purchased by civilian
grays after decommissioning from military duties. The nicest one I've
ever seen was illustrated in UFO Modeler #42 a couple of years back: the
foxtail (real, of course) and fluffy dice were a nice touch. Note to
anyone who has this issue: compare the photo on page 13 to the one printed
in Galaxy Models #2, page 26. It's evident that the yellow and red flames
painted around the rim of the hull by its civilian owner were originally in
red only. The yellow seems to have been added at a later date. Overall,
it's a fine effort by Testors, considering the technical difficulties
involved.

[Charles Metz]

I have no interest in UFOs or science fiction, so it was only by chance
that I happened to read "Accurizing the Testors Roswell UFO," by Glen
Broman et al. Excellent stuff -- don't overlook it!!

Charles Metz