Well, here I am again, red-faced, because I notice that it's been a year and a half since I posted that I was about to begin my build of this beautiful kit. It didn't happen. And to make it worse, it was a magazine assignment, which required me months of trying to convince my British editors that real spacecraft qualifiy as flying machines and thus were proper subjects for aviation modeling magazines. They are still waiting for their model and article.
I have this AMS problem, and it stems from having heard so many conflicting stories about which of the Mercury spacecraft, those that flew manned missions, the kit most closely resembles. I'm pretty certain that, as was noted above, unless you are doing Alan Shepard or Guss Grissom, you'll need to carve the mirror off the figure and somehow add zippers and I-don't-know-what to the space suit.
But which instrument panel does it closely resemble, and has anyone yet found any close FS matches for the pastel colors used on those panels? I know they were not painted with FS colors, but a close match would be nice for a starting point. I have a shortage of color photos of the interiors.
Also, I'm still in a quandry about the forward pressure bulkhead. There is an enormous void behind the instrument panels with that bulkhead left out, and it shows. And no matter how many of the wiring bundles you add, it doesn't compensate for that big piece of concave metal. I seem to recall reading somewhere that someone smash-molded one from a rubber ball! I wish I had kept that article.
Anyway, has anyone yet made any aftermarket parts for this fine model, aside from the AM decal sheet and the Nautilus stands, both of which I recommend highly? And what's the latest on the Gemini and Apollo command module kits in 1/12?
Finally, can anyone tell me if there is a web site devoted to Real Space modeling, one that has a forum for asking questions? I'd love to find one. There just seems to be too few of us on the FSM site.
Many thanks,
TOM