OlCabour's Hangar

Now that my works at home are completed (until the next ones ?), I can finally throw myself on my favorite hobby.

And I started with the 1/144 Fine Molds Millenium Falcon, that was making eyes to me for some time!

Han : You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon ?
Ben : should I have ?
Han : It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs!
(...)
Han : She's fast enough for you, old man

It is a nice model, well detailed, easy to build. In short, she looks like a little gem. More closely, it nevertheless has a few imperfections, as we shall see later.

It is based on the Empire Strikes Back Falcon with five landing gear, and additional wells under the saucer. For ESB movie, a new model of the Falcon was built, smaller but more convenient to handle, then the A Nen Hope one. The ANH Falcon was also modified to be upgraded for ESB, so with wells added. Nevertheless, Details remains different between these two models. One easy ways to recognize the ANH to the ESB Falcon, is to focus on two raised parts that connect the saucer to the mandibles on each side of the central clamp. On the ANH Falcon, their front shape is trapezoidal, where it is cylindrical on ESB one.

The box art of the kit is as a photo model ANH, and does not represent that found inside the box!

Pro:

• As I said, the level of detail. I compared it to the Master Replicas (which is the same version of the Falcon), and it's really correct. Hard to beat in injected.
• Correct proportions
• A common scale with Gashapons kits (F-Toys), which allows the creation of dioramas of a reasonable size (compatible with display cases for example).

Cons:

• The external escape pods recessed panel lines are straight, while much of them should present kinks
• The mandibles: as on 1/72, FM is wrong here, but this is less viewable due to the tinier size of the model. By cons, mandibles are curiously connected to the clamp, and need to be worked.
• The pipes are molded into the body (which is logical given the fineness of molding), by cons it is noticable in 2 or 3 places, when they dive into the access openings.
• The access ramp is lacking, which is a shame for ground and hangar dioramas.
• I would also have liked some characters to enhance the cockpit

In short, the shopping list of things "to add/modify" is quickly drawn up :

• Lighting the engine, the beacons in the mandibles, the cockpit, and why not the turrets
• Improve some small details here and there, mainly due to the constraints of casting, except inside of the clamp where they are missing
• Complete capsules recessed panel lines
• Add the impacts that dot the armor shield of the saucer
• Add some 1/144 characters in the cockpit
• Despite I will mainly showed her in flight, improve the landing gear with a photoetched upgrade kit (in case she stoppes in a possible diorama hangar).

All parts are reviewed one by one, and black marks are drawn directly on them where they need modifications.