...and we're back.

So I thought it would be fun to resurrect the blog as I do the DeAgostini partwork magazine model of the Millennium Falcon. If you're not familiar with these, partworks are basically a model or collection of things you subscribe to. You get a magazine, and a different piece every so often. For example, there's one where every month you get two small model ships from the Star Trek universe. And others where they send you a new book every month.

One of the more popular partwork types is models. You get a very large, high-end model with lots of detail and cool features (electronics, moving parts, etc) over the course of a year or two, with little magazinettes each time showing you how to assemble that issue's parts. I'll be doing the Falcon, which is 100 issues over either 25 or 12 months, depending. It's a tad cheaper on the 12-month plan once you add it all up, so I'm going that route.

Anyway, I'm going to try to pace myself. I'm getting about 8 issues per month on the 1-year plan, so the equivalent of getting one every few days. I figure if I do one segment of each issue per day, that should be a good pace, not counting down days and stuff like that of course.

Anyway, let's look at the first month's goodies:


First 4 magazine issues, an overall guide, and a blueprint of the ship:

 

The blueprint really looks good, btw:

And here's the first set of four bundles.

So. The first part of issue 1 is the cockpit. If you see the top left bundle of parts, the two circles with rectangular slots in them are the back wall of the cockpit, and the black thing in the loewr left corner is the floor. Basically, you've got a solid plastic piece of the back with holes cut for lights, and a sticker that goes over it.

You have to get the sticker lined up over the plastic part just right, so the controls align with the holes (there will be lighting behind there in the finished product). I found the easiest way to do this was to get them lined up just right, then use some gator clips to clamp them together on one side while I removed the backing and secured the sticker on the other, thus:

Then you just remove the clip, and repeat on the other side. Came out perfect.

And here's what it looks like attached to the cockpit floor part. The sunlight from the window already makes it look a little "lit up":

Anyhow, I am officially off & rolling. Tomorrow night, I hit the next piece of the first issue, one of the turret guns. TTFN!