Area 51 Saucer

This kit was one of the first ones I picked up when I started collecting space ship kits. I found it locally. I thought it looked good, it came with a second model as a bonus  and had a very intriguing story on the box.

If you’re not familiar with the Bob Lazar story, check out the link on the bottom of the page. To make a long story short, Bob Lazar says that he worked in Area 51 where he worked on an extra-terrestrial saucer ship. His story is dubious, but intriguing. To my knowledge, this kit put out by Testor’s is the only money he made for his claims.

The model is big and easy to put together. However, there’s really not much to it. Basically, there’s a top and a bottom. The instructions show how you can make the model in several different ways. The top and bottom pieces of the hull is molded in clear plastic which should have warned me off trying anything clever. The instructions suggest several ways to display the interior, which is stoic, Spartan, sparse and not much to it.

I went along with the suggestion of painting half the top hull and leaving the other half to view the interior. The detail of the lower deck was even less interesting, so I just painted the entire bottom hull.

I used acrylic silver and struggled with the airbrushing. The masking of the half hull and windows was straightforward. The problem is that clear parts hate me. I had to make about twenty coats before the paint stopped beading up.

Then came the assembly of the pieces. Did I mention that clear pieces hate me. Before the final coat of Testor’s Dullcoat, I coated the hull halves with Future floor wax to protect against the superglue, but it still was a bitch to connect the sides.

I put on the decals of the top windows and the top antenna.

The decal for the window were easy to put on but I don’t know how much it added to the model. You can look through the clear hull windows and see two little Grey Aliens hanging out around little chairs. I think the kit actually looks better as a silver disk. I could have saved a lot of silver painting, but it was a learning experience.

I'm still intrigued by the whole Bob Lazar story. Below is a link that tells his unbelievable tale.