Steve Perry, Rochester Hills, Michigan
“I built this model (Revell 1/200 scale Space Shuttle) for my brother, who lives in Los Angeles,” Steve says. “He saw the Endeavor flying into LAX on the back of its Boeing 747 transporter.” Steve upgraded the Revell snap kit with an ingenious display. He added brass pins to secure the Canada Arm in the cargo bay and mounted the satellite on music wire. Astronauts in EVA are mechanic figures from Preiser, transformed into space-walking astronauts by dipping their heads in 5-minute epoxy to create helmets and stowing a chunk of sheet styrene on their backs for packs. He counterbalanced the display with Pinewood Derby lead weights and resin. Unfinished white plastic is marked with airbrushed Floquil black enamel and Tamiya spray-can gloss aluminum on the leading edges. “The decal sheet did not include the modern NASA roundels or Canada lettering, so I printed those on Testors decal paper from Internet images,” he says.