When I was a kid, my uncle and I build an Aurora Flying Sub model.  Of course, that was a long time ago, and that model was long since lost.  However, eBay is a (sort of) wonderful thing, and I picked up one of these kits a few years ago.  Then, last year, I decided that I wanted to build it.

One of the things about this kit — it’s not put together very well and as an inexperienced modeler I made a LOT of mistakes.  The end result of the build wasn’t all that bad though,  and it’s not like I’m going to throw it away or anything.

One of the first challenges I had was the painting.  It was surprisingly hard to get the masking right for the fins:

Masking is, of course, second nature to experienced model builders — of which I am not — and I discovered all kinds of interesting things.  Like the fact that you really need to press down on the tape to keep the paint from leaking under it.  And then there was the fact that if you let said paint dry, THEN peeled up the tape, you took the paint with it.  Of course, it wasn’t only the fins that needed to be masked.  It was pretty much EVERYthing.

 

The next challenge was the teeny, tiny little guys that had to be painted.  And other parts, like the control panels and such because the model didn’t come with any decals.

All in all, I don’t think the guys turned out too badly for a first attempt:

I also decided to do a bit of detailing to the panels and the engines:

All of that painting was done free-hand and I promise that it looks better in person.  The camera is pretty unforgiving.

I mentioned earlier that the parts simply don’t fit together very well, and the internal support structure as seen here, was pretty challenging:

 

And the end of the day, the build was fun.  Not something I’d recommend for a starter kit though.  eBay seems to be the only place to find the things, and they can be quite expensive.  Feel free to hop on over to the Gallery where you can see more of the pictures.