Revell Babylon 5 Station

[Cody2003]

Hello! First time poster, long time lurker.

I lucked into this model for a very good price a little while ago and decided now was the time to try and get it built. B5 was one of my absolute favorite shows when it was on air and I'm slowly working my way through building some part of every sci-fi universe that has been important to me so this kit was a must have.


So far, I've added a brass main beam from end to end and bearings in the gravity section. The whole model is suspended on a 1/4" acrylic stand rather than the kit supplied A-frame.


I also changed the 5 on the stand. I know it's not completely accurate and I may end up working more on the center section above the "y" before I'm completely happy, but much better than the very plain original.



There are some improvements I still want to make and I plan on lighting some parts of the model. If I can figure out a good arrangement of gears and small enough motor I hope to make the gravity section rotate. If anyone has any ideas or tips that may help I would be very grateful since I've been scratching my head on it for a couple weeks now.

 

[19narvik40]

Cody2003,

I have had my kit started in a box for about ten years now. I plan to recast the kit a-frames in clear resin to give the same effect as yours. An alternative is to follow your example of the brass tubing in the reactor section and mounting a curved metal piece through the tail end and suspending it that way. I've seen one modeller mount the base to wood and mount that to the wall using the method I just mentioned.

I had asked on another site about motorizing the rotating section and most replies advised using a small stepper motor over gear reduction. The trick is finding a speed that looks normal when used on the kit. Lighting might be an issue with the rotating section unless you can craft a circular brass plate that the light leads have constant contact with.instead of a metal rod you could use a metal tube carefully bent to allow for wires leading from the kit to a power source.

I have started on the spine covering over the open sections on the underside of the spine from the docking area to the center of the rotating section.

Here are three site showing some ideas for displaying the station including the one mentioned above;
http://siriusreplicas.com/models/scifi/b5/b5.htm
http://culttvman.com/main/jim-james-babylon-five/
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/events/wfest2k2/1v_24_b5.JPG

 

[Cody2003]

Very nice finished builds! Ya I thought about the wire thing as well, but this seemed like this approach would be less prone to bouncing. I say that as I poke the model and it wobbles like a mad man. Ah well. I hadn't considered stepper motors. I'm not much of an electronics person but I thought you had to supply pulses to a stepper motor to make it turn different speeds? If not that might be a good plan.

For the lighting I think I have a pretty good idea. I can run power down the center tube and I left space inside the front section for lighting there and the assembly rotates around the tube instead of it rotating. I don't plan on putting anything in the long cylindrical section where access is limited anyway. I'll be sure to post how it goes in case anyone is interested or the whole thing goes boom.

 

[19narvik40]

Be careful what you wish for my friend. Just remember one of Ivanova's mantra's, "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."