In January, we've had an unbelievable amount of production problems with our previous caster, Silvercast.  These production setbacks came to a head around mid February where we had to pull our contract with them.

After a few days of searching for a new production caster, we were able to land a contract with none other than Jeff Valent Studios!  And, we rushed to get him set up for our starship line.  Unfortunately, this meant we needed to make new molds and in order to make new molds, we needed new prototype models.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it gave us an opportunity to address a lot of the issues our customers have had with our miniatures.  We've made many (and I mean, MANY) improvements to our miniatures.  Some of these improvements include:

• Cleaner Miniatures-  You are going to be amazed at how clean these new miniatures are.  The pic below demonstrates this improvement.  Now, bear in mind this is a master cast...  We have some of the production casts now and they look just as good, albeit with a little more flash here and there.

• Mounting Features-  One of the biggest complaints that we've had was the problem of mounting our miniatures.  More precisely the lack of features for mounting the miniature to a flight stand.  We've fixed that with all of our models.

• Acrylic Bases-  Our flight bases are now clear acrylic with center holes precisely drilled.  These bases (from Litko Aerosystems) is a marked improvement over the wooden ones as you'll soon see.

• Smaller Fleet Boxes-  The packaging for our popular fleet deals is more intuitive and much smaller than before.  This make shipping and storage of these fleets much easier.

We're calling this Wave 1.5.  Wave 1.5 is where we've taken the lessons learned and the feedback we've received from our valued customers to task with our Wave 1 ships and work out the kinks for the upcoming Wave 2 release (some of the ships you are beginning to see now).

These Wave 1.5 ships will be the same price as their Wave 1 predecessors.  Nothing will change, except for these obvious improvements.

What does this mean to you?

As of midnight, April 29th 2005, we are opening up pre-orders for our Wave 1.5 release.  We've had some small hiccups here and there, which is to be expected, but, we're starting to get these ships in now an it won't be long before we throw the switch and put Wave 1.5 on for general release.

All Wave 1 ships will be removed from service and discarded.  They will no longer be available for purchase.

If you have purchased from our Xtreme Hobby EStore before, we thank you for your patronage and support.  An email is being sent to you with a special "Thank You" offer for these new Wave 1.5 ships.  If you haven't purchased Cold Navy yet, then we encourage you to give us a try.

To help with this encouragement, we have restarted our Customer Appreciation sale that you all have enjoyed so much.  Each of our Cold Navy ships are 20% off of MSRP.  But for a limited time, the sale ends on July 31st, so you'll want to hurry.

Stop by our EStore and pre-order your ships today:

If you have any questions or comments, please, feel free to contact us.

Thank you very much for visiting!