Kyu-Woong Lee’s UFO Skydiver

From 2002

I wanted to take a break from some of the more intense projects I had lately (2′ Sulaco, Cutaway TOS E), so I built this Skydiver model made by Hoto models from Monsters In Motion, pretty much out of the box. Out of all the vehicles in Gerry Anderson’s UFO series, I always liked this one the most when I was a kid. It didn’t matter that the design was pretty illogical, with Sky 1 launching off the nose of Diver without even the slightest hint of recoil, or jet engines with no intakes, just gun pods. It was sort of like the Aliens dropship; crazy, but cool!

Construction and Accuracy:

Overall, it was a pretty fun kit to build. Everything went together fairly well with some typical amount of puttying and smoothing. I would say the only major correction was making sure Sky 1 line up with Diver properly.

If assembled as received, Sky 1 would tilt toward the starboard side, and point to the right. Also, the starboard wing was a little warped, so the gun pod/engine pointed downward. I’m not sure the problems were just with my particular kit, or my assembly, but at any rate, I set out to correct these alignment problems.

In order to make Sky 1 point straight, the interface plate had to be sawed off of Diver with a razor saw, and the front of Diver had to be sanded straight. Then, the interface plate back was sanded smooth, and replaced onto Diver. Easy enough!

To correct for the starboard tilt, I sawed off the tubes on Diver where Sky 1’s engines were inserted. Then, I used a Dremel with a cylindrical sanding attachment to grind the port side tube opening a little lower, so the engines would be horizontally aligned. I also ground the starboard side a bit to accommodate the crooked starboard engine (from the wing warp). I did the best I could to glue the starboard engine straight. The engine tubes on Diver were easily later replaced by 1/2″ hollow styrene tubing.

On the accuracy side, the model looks pretty good. I think Sky 1’s body was a little on the thin side, or maybe a little long, but I don’t consider myself an Anderson expert.

The nose machine gun barrels were not included in the kit, so I made my own using the tips sawed off of mechanical pencils and styrene tubing.

One of the nice features of the kit was that it included a clear, vacuformed cockpit option, with interior and pilot provided. This provided a more realistic alternative to the solid resin cockpit. The clear cockpit looked a little larger than the solid one, however, as if the solid one were used as a master for the vacuformed one.

Finishing, trims, and decals:

This was pretty fun. The directions said to mix 10% silver, 40% gold, 20% olive drab, and 30% cocoa brown. The final color looked pretty close to some of the photos of the model. I applied this on top of a base primer. The only mistake I made was not applying a clear gloss-coat after airbrushing the base color, because the finish seemed rather sensitive to adhesives and scratching. Decal adhesion was also not as good on this finish without a lot of micro-sol.

Although I used enamels for the overall base color, I opted to use acrylic metallic colors for most of the trim panels, since it seemed to brush on easily with minimal brush marks. Flat aluminum, chrome silver, german gray, metallic gray, darkened metallic gray, titanium gold, and flat black were used.

I also used some Microscale color decal sheets for some of the metallic panels on Sky 1 (steel and silver), the black conning tower trim, and the white tail underside.

For the pin-striping, I used Pactra’s pin-stripe sets, with varying widths. Black, white, red, and silver were used. Most of the time, the 1/16″ and 1/32″ widths did fine, but for the really thin lines, I sliced off from the wider pin-stripes. I also used automotive “burnished gold” and “bright gold” for the Sky 1 flaps and panels.

Most of the markings were included in the kit’s decal sheets. I embellished Sky 1 a bit with decals from model aircraft kits. There were a lot of intriguing panels, hatches, and other detail markings in the kit’s sheets, but there was no instruction on where to apply them. I improvised some of the markings seen in reference shots from the aircraft and kit’s sheets.

Overall, the kit was a fun, relaxing kit to build. I’m looking forward to getting the UFO DVD releases, since I’ve long forgotten how bad some of the episodes got (hey, even Star Trek had “Spock’s Brain”…). I’ll probably get one of the new, larger scale Lunar Module/Carrier kits next. Skydiver and the lunar module/carrier were probably my favorite designs from the show.

Kyu-Woong Lee