dpastern

That's at least good news, although I'm not looking to buy this kit (no money!). Still, I just find it impossible to be so pedantic to have an ultra critically accurate kit of a plane or ship, etc. It's just overkill to me. More power to those that demand that sort of accuracy, it's just not my cuppa tea so to speak. Tamiya's efforts are fine by me.

Bill, I disagree. I'm buying a book series named "Annals of the deep sky" (it's an Astronomy title). The publisher is a small publisher, and there are only 2 authors. They have a facebook page with regular updates on where they are with the books (there's currently Six volumes released, but we're only a 1/3 through the constellations, so there's probably at least another 15 volumes to come...). If they can manage to communicate, then HK Models can too.

Communication isn't difficult though, and is critical to any business maintaining a relationship with its customers. How long would it take HKM to release a snippet of information on the current progress of this kit? I mean, really?

Well, HK models is a small, boutique model kit manufacturer. R&D costs money, and I bet they don't make a huge profit from existing kit releases either. So, money will dictate development of new kits and things will take time. Still, announcing a kit and then 3 years later there's no new news isn't very good PR imho. HK models would have been far better off delaying an announcement of the kit until they were well along in development imho.

actually, if you bothered to read my post in its entirety, I don't use any social media (other than YouTube). I simply pointed out that you can see content on twitter and instagram without having to have an account. Facebook is very lazy when it comes to shutting down outright revolting pages, such as certain woman's or men's groups, racist groups, etc, but is exceptionally quick to take down innocent pictures of mothers breast feeding with their children. Something that is very much natural. I find their modus operandi offensive and I refuse to support their crappy site. It's that simple.

No, Iain is not right. I can see content on twitter and instagram (and vine) without having to sign up. Facebook just obfuscates content to try and force you to sign up to its crap. There's also a host of political reasons why I dislike facebook. PS I'm not any social media. Been there, done that, never again.

Sadly, Iain, the link is no good to us who don't have crapbook...

Congrats Vaughn!

What an awesome build!

super stuff Vaughn! Just a suggestion - you could have made a correction kit for the rest of us mere mortals!

Hans Rosling - religions and babies: Shane Koyczan's beautiful "To this day" (on bullying): it's particular poignant to me as I was severely bulled throughout my entire schooling years, by both students and teachers.

well my kit has arrived, took just over 2 weeks to get from Russia to Australia. Given that prior experiences with Russia post have well, not been good (items arrive but are slower than a dead snail nailed to the floor!), I was surprised. I am very impressed with the quality of the kit - for the money, this is a no brainer! I am tempted to try and light this kit, but I have never done any lighting before and suck @ electrical stuff. My main concern is drilling - I'm worried about breaking the actual plastic parts and ruining the kit. I have a small pin vice (this one actually, https://www.hobbytools.com.au/swivel-head-pin-vice-1mm-3mm/). I just can't believe that there's no commercially available battery powered low RPM electrical drill that can take bits down to 0.1mm...I think that I won't bother to light this kit, just build it OOB. I may (when funds permit), purchase a 2nd one and light that instead. I've been to Bunnings (local hardware store chain in Australia) and bought some copper piping and dowel, as well as resin glue. I couldn't get doweling to fit the copper pipe (or anything else that I looked at) perfectly, so will have to wrap some masking tape around said dowel to make the OD larger so that it's a snugger fit into the copper piping. I was able to pick up a really nice piece of thick pine for the display base from a very local sawmill that I didn't even know existed (even though I've driven past it hundreds of times lol!). Are there any updates on your drilling progress Michael?

Michael, I came across this in another forum's thread on this Zvezda kit - images of the actual studio model (I believe it's the 8' from TESB): https://onedrive.live.com/?id=B9FE0AEBDC25FDBC%211139&cid=B9FE0AEBDC25FDBC there's tonnes of images, and I've had problems downloading them, so ymmv. This has been publicly shared by the owner btw. There's some talk that the ISD in ANH and TESB were White, and the lighting during shooting made them look Grey, that might be the case, but it's almost impossible to be sure, which is very frustrating. If only we had accurately colour balanced images from the day...I can't trust the images from the above onedrive link, cos I don't know if the person who took them took any care with regards to WB (White Balance) accuracy or not. I tend to use a hand held sekonic light meter for things like this...I'm going to examine the images and think long and hard about colours. The studio model from ANH didn't have much lighting, that was enhanced for the studio model in TESB, which was obviously a lot larger, allowing for more realistic lighting imho. I still think .25mm will be a more appropriate size for the Zvezda kit!

Hey Michael, What size holes are you looking to drill? I see a lot of people are doing .5mm with this kit, but I honestly think that that is too large and that .25mm would be better. Are you going to drill holes in the side plates as well as the upper and lower deck pieces? Did you also get the Falcon3D garbage chute assembly and shield generators (the latter of which look the best of the current after market parts currently available)? I caved in 2 nights ago and bought this kit from a Russian EBay seller and I'm looking forward to it arriving. Oh, and have you given any thought to the paint job/colour scheme?

Is there anything that exists for electrically powered drills that can take the ultra small drill bits? I'm seriously thinking of the Zvezda 1/2700 Imperial Star Destroyer kit and trying to light it, but not looking forward to a thousand holes being drilled manually by hand...(I'm thinking .25mm holes and fibre optics anything larger is too big imho for the scale). Surely something exists...