Last November (2017), Ravenstar Studios had a pre-Christmas sale, so I bought some items that I had been thinking about for quite some time. I picked up the Space Stations that he had available as well as the large Ship Yards kit. The original order actually got lost in the mail somewhere, but he kindly sent out a second one, along with some extras.  The items I ordered were:

Fort Courage Space Station
Missile Platform (2)
Jansen Research Station (2)
DSS McKinzie Space Station
ShipYard – Complete Set

He also included these items in my shipment as extras:

Warden Sensor Station (3)
Freeman Repair Station
Zane Refueling Station
Battle Station Raiden
Typhoons Grace
Fuco Cruiser
Unlisted Federation Expanse ship, similar to Raimus Destroyer but bigger

It all showed up in a fairly typical shipping box:

Everything was packed in nicely with a protective bubble wrap layer

I admit I was a little overwhelmed when I pulled everything out and saw the pile of pieces that would make up my stations and shipyards.  But they were divided up quite nicely into several ziplock bags.

The parts for the Fort Courage Space Station

I preferred the more detailed piece for the bottom of the space station over the plain dome, so I carefully drilled my own hole in it so I could use it with the base.

The parts for the Missile Platforms

Clipped apart and trimmed the Missile Platform parts.

Glued the domes/stand mounts to the bottoms.

The mounting holes for the missile launchers weren’t well defined, so I used a small hand drill to fix them up.  The posts on the missile launchers were pretty good.

Got all the launchers glued onto the platforms without much difficulty

Onto the Jansen Research Stations.  Top and bottom views of the parts.

And assembled

Next up was one of the bigger sets, the DSS McKinzie Space Station.  Fortunately the website had some pretty good photos to help me figure out how to assemble this one.

Put the arms on first

Then added the various docking ports and the end caps for the arms.

I decided I would rather use a Corsec base instead of the base that came with the station so I drilled out a larger hole in the bottom and glued in a Corsec post mount.

I then glued mounts to several of the other units that I had assembled, or that didn’t need assembly.

The mystery Federation Expanse ship.  Never did find this one on the website, but it is similiar to one other ship, but about twice as long

The parts for Battle Station Raiden and two ships, Typhoons Grace and the Fuco Cruiser

The piece for the bottom of the space station and a Corsec mount.

Managed to get the mount glued on, and the bottom part attached to the main body of the space station.

Attached the rest of the parts and screwed it into a stand.

Time to Prime!  I decided to try Army Painter PlateMail Metal primer for the Space Stations.  For the ships I used my usual go to primer, Tamiya Gray Fine Surface Primer.

Primed the stations in my high tech priming booth (old HP Printer box) on a very sunny day.

I was quite happy with the way the platemail primer worked out

Then it was on to the biggest set, the Ship Yard – Complete Set. Laid out the bigger parts first, just to see what I was dealing with. To be continued 🙂