Revell's Mercury and Gemini double kit

samdiego

Just brought home this re-release. These were available for a dime in the late 60s as enticement to join a model of the month club. So I kept taping dimes to the cards I'd find and must have had four of these things.Now I know why I never finished one too, the engraving is very fine and I'm pretty much positive that I would never have been able to get most of the parts off of the trees. I'm stoked to have this one back and the chance to do it justice. State of the art for 1963, still an impressive 1/48 kit today. One oddball thing. Landing gear on the Gemini. Apparently to allow being laid over on the recovery ship, three ski equipped legs would fold down. The pitfalls of doing that kind of model concurrently with a 1:1 that's being invented as it's being built.

end of day one

Thanks for the interesting post.

I recall seeing artwork during that era of ski equipped Gemini with Rogallo chutes and must presume that is shown on your kit.

The capsule was intended , after a standard re-entry, to glide down to earth and land on the skis.

I remember getting these by joining a science book club. I joined three times.

High dollar now on ebay.

That's it ! Not a model club, I still have some of those books. They came with stamps for the color panels. It's all so clear now . . .     The price should be coming down. This was $15 at the LHS.

End of Day 2

I'm not going to change the many differences I've found between reference photos and what is cast here. Again, entirely understandable given the way NASA did things. I'm more interested in what a best case scenario could have been if I 'd had any modeling skills back then. I haven't detailed the back wall, the Astronaut is just laying in it for the photo. Love the instrument panel being color coded in 50's era file cabinet pastel colors. Obviously the blue area would be for the windshield wipers and washers, foglights and turn signals. The green would have been for controlling ride height thru the airbags. Tan was an awesome Harmon-Karden sound system. Grey was top secret.

It could be better, but even modeled with the hatch open, stuff is hard to see inside.

When was this kit re-issued? I am not able to find it  on Revell's website.

I suppose that there is a slight chance that I picked up something that had been brought into the LHS  for consignment or trade, but they are usually marked as such. i did find a date of 1996 on the end flap. Just picked it up last Friday!

OK... well I hope Revell eventually re issues it again... they are slowly working their way thru the Space progarm kits.... this fall they will be re issuing the 1/48 Apollo set that has the Lunar Module with launch shroud, Service Module, and Command Module. I have been waiting for that one for YEARS!!!

I wish someone would release a nice Gemini kit. There are several Apollo kits already out there and we have the large Mercury from Atomic.

The mercury isn't bad, I haven't gotten into the Gemini yet. I'm expecting the same differences in 1:1 vs the kit.

Again, the history I'm recreating is of the kit not the vehicle. Overall, fit, engraving, flash have all been pretty good, considering. The escape tower struts are some of the thinnest castings I've ever dealt with, yet they cleaned up easily and installed painlessly. It would have been a little quicker to replace the struts with wire, but you don't have to.

Day three

I did temp Mr. Murphy by putting the pointy end on mid-build instead of waiting. Of course I had to replace the broken one with a straight pin, still needs touch up.

 I've spent an entire professional lifetime interpreting work orders, instructions, manuals, whatever and I still missed the part where it says the panel with the door should be left removeable. I left the door as removeable, not the panel.Not a big enough deal to fix but if I had it to do over . . . And now, the decals. Toss them. 4 different setting solutions and zilch, stiff as a spaghetti. I've ordered a set from Space Model Systems for the Mercury and it looks like I'll be able to do the Gemini with the extra decals on the sheet. In all, the Mercury suffered the common problems of that era. Unfortunate placement of sprue connections and engraving that's a little soft, but I'm glad to have found it again. I do wish they had included the booklet that pertained to the flights and history.

Just a little more to go on the Gemini. As a kit, the Merc was in better shape and the fit was better,

The skis on the Gemini were part of a concept to have it return on land instead of the ocean.  The original concept had a para-foil that would deploy from a container along the line between the 2 hatches and be tethered to the front of the craft and the rear center just forward of the heat shield.

Interesting that in the 1960's we were trying to eliminate water landings but they decided it would be safer given 3/4 of the planet could be used for landing.  The new manned vehicle scheduled for launch in 2014+ will return to water landings.

Mitsdude,

Try Glenn over at Real Space Models.  www.realspacemodels.com