By Mike Mendoza - images & text © 2007

Scale: Not stated - 16"/ 406mm long when built

Parts: Resin (GRP), white metal and brass rod

Instructions: 1 page assembly guide and CD with photos of completed model

Decals: A solid sheet of red

Molding Quality: 8 - see review

Detail: 8 - Surface detail is generally good, though rough in some areas.

Accuracy: 8 - see review

MSRP: £99.00 GBP (~$195.53 USD/ $222.66 CAN/ € 145.61 EUR) available from Comet Miniatures

Overall Rating: 9 - See review

Image: SID's head, underneath

Image: Main body parts

Image: Closer look at the detail

Image: More body part

Image: Bottom of the body parts

Image: Detail

Image: Collars

Image: Detail piece

Image: Radio and solar array pieces

Image: Antennae and assorted odds and ends

Image: This dish will need work

Image: White metal parts

From the Gerry Anderson SciFi series UFO, Space Intruder Detector (S.I.D.) a sophisticated computer orbiting the Earth alerting Shado of incoming UFOs!

What You Get

What you get are plastic rods, white metal pieces, brass tubing, cotton wiring and resin body parts. The body parts themselves do need some work, for there are some pin holes and some surface features that will need to be redone due to the presence of pin holes taking a bite out of them.

Some of the plastic tubing did arrive broken probably due to the travel from overseas. These parts are what I believe was to hold the solar panels to the main body. I'm figuring on replacing them with brass or aluminum rod of the same diameter thus ensuring that they will not break in the future and will better support the solar panels.

The kit also included cotton wiring to be used as wiring on the outside of S.I.D., but I think that using the right diameter of guitar wire or a fine wire would look a lot better than what was supplied.

Instructions

With this kit you get two types of instructions. One is a set is paper instructions which have photos of the assembly process and some captions. The other is a CD with several pictures of the finished product.

Decals

What they give you is a rectangular piece of red decal sheet. What they expect you to do is to cut the stripes you need for the stripes to put on S.I.D., which to me is too much work. My take is to buy some of the pinstripes that you can find in the RC car model world or try to paint them on. So for the decals portion of the kit, I rate it a 3.

Accuracy

So, does this look like the model from the show? I have had trouble finding studio shots of S.I.D., so it is hard to say. Comes close to what I see on my DVD of the show, so for now that works for me.

Overall

It's a nice subject that I have yet to see at a show. From examining the parts supplied, I feel that you can replace certain items to improve the kits appearance, like the cotton wire with fine wire or replace the solar panels with something that looks more like solar panels like - maybe even real solar panels from those solar panel experiment kits that you can get at a good price. Toss the decal sheet given and buy stripes or paint them on yourself. The kit does need some minor work, but if you are a UFO fan, you gotta have S.I.D. in your collection!!!