Hi Greg,
I didn't build the VEC but the BMR-600. The kit was not excellent, a lot of parts were warped (but this is easy to fix), the detail was good on some parts and quite mean on others, a lot of tiny air bubbles needed to be filled and the PE parts were very stiff.
The instructions were quite easy to follow.
However I've heard that as the VEC was more recent, the kit was better than the older BMR.
HTH
Olivier
http://olivier.carneau.free.fr/index.htm
http://olivier.carneau.free.fr/gb_version/index.htm