My Hubble space telescope was made from the SkilCraft (Lindberg) Kit, (1/72 scale) with numerous fixes. The huge gutters between assembled parts were definetly addressed, as were the solar panel thickness. The hand holds were nothing more than flat bumps on the kit, these were also have to be fixed. Most of the gaps could be hidden under the insulation blankets I intended to make, but some are in VERY visible areas.

Most of the fixes I did were very easy to do. The hand holds were made by removing the molded in ones and replacing them with styrene rod of appropriate size. The solar arrays were carefully cut out of the frames and replaced with extremely thin sheet styrene. The tube was covered with aluminum foil to replicate the foil insulation around the telescope. All in all the fixes were simple, but time consuming. I feel they helped immensely in the look of the final product; the kit out of the box is quite unappealing, mainly due to the very overthick solar arrays.

Side view, showing new solar arrays