For the preview of this kit that shows the bits and pieces, please go here. 

 Well, it took me about five minutes from writing the preview of this kit to where I had the first glue applied to the kit. Some models just affect one in that way. I am particularly prone to these old kits, especially if they ooze cool or unusual. This one definitely does just that. As you can see, this thing is basically a conical section with a bunch of thingies sticking out of it. Seems to be a simple build, doesn't it. Aha, that is where the kit draws one into its web! While simple in parts, it is not simple in terms of fit and filler. To think that one can get away with no filler on a Polar Lights Sci-fi kit is pure madness. 

First of all, the main fuselage sections need to be glued together. A simple two piece affair, you say. Well, after sitting in a box and being shipped in a hot container all the way from China, the two parts are not the same diameter. That means squeezing one of them to fit into the other. I glued one side first and let it dry before attempting the other. As you can see from the image, there is a definite 'overbite' so to speak.

After the one side had dried, the other side was glued and held in place with lots of masking tape. At this time, the front piece was installed. This was a simple fit and there was actually quite a bit of slop in it. Not so for the ring at the back. This piece fits over ribs in the aft fuselage. The fit is VERY tight and required pressure on it while the glue dried. This ring is quite small and the rest of the fluted section fits on this. The gaps at the join are prominent as one would expect from this type of kit. Break out the filler!!!!

I applied filler to all the seams and it required several sessions for some of them. I also stupidly put filler on all the parts near the back. The end result was a real mess that would have looked much better had I done nothing at all. Frankly, I just couldn't think of how to get the filler out of the scalloped areas. I tried flooding the area with glue hoping that it would smooth things out. It just made things much worse. It was cleaned up as much as possible and left. It is hoped and several coats of paint in that area will fill in some of the gaps and depressions. Man, I hate it when I screw up something simple like this!

Once I had turned my attention away from the fuselage, I started assembling the arms holding the swiveling emitters. These had to be glued with care to make sure the attachments still swiveled. They also required some filler, as one would expect from this type of kit. While that was going on, the hemispherical rear end piece was glued in place.

Then the inevitable happened: I lost interest in the kit. It sat under an increasingly thicker patina of dust for a very long time. Like about 8 months or more! I finally got back into it after cleaning up my workbench and realizing just how many unfinished kits I had! The nest step was to glue on all the little emitter arms. I did the aft and six forward ones first. These then had filler applied to any seams and left to dry. The base for the rotating cop light was glued into its mount at this time as well. Test fitting the two aft side fuselage emitter mounts, I noticed that the attachment 'feet' on these were grossly too thick. Leaving them alone would mean that the emitter mounts would stick up proud of the surface by a goodly amount. These were then sanded down until they were nearly paper thin to get a good seating. They were set aside until the forward mounts were properly cleaned up to prevent breaking them off. 

With all the emitter mounts cleaned up, they were duly glued in place. Fit was pretty good, though some needed filler at the base where they attached to the fuselage. During this time, I managed to break one of the swivel joins so repaired it with a section of paper clip.