GAF

Bakster>  Never let reality stand in the way of a good diorama!    Since there's a photo of a hose attached to the Bell X-1E, I say go ahead!  Should be dramatic.

Thanks, Gary. I appreciate it.

Your CM is coming along great. I can't wait to see more paint on it.

Also, I continue to enjoy your space facts. It's very interesting to read the progression towards space.

Gary: Looks good! 

I'll have to check out 'Riding Rockets'. Sounds interesting, thanks!!! 

Thanks, guys!  Glad you enjoy the space history stuff.  I thought it adds a bit of flavor to the thread.  And definitely check out the "Riding Rockets" book, if you can find a copy.

Don't have much to report.  I didn't get more painting done as I had hoped, but I did go out to find a color I needed at the local hobby shop.  Vallejo paint had something close.

While waiting and working on other stuff, I started the base for the model, which consists of a square styrofoam core which I am covering with matte board.  You can see it here and the preliminary mockup of my hoped for final assembly.

I hope to have some sort of tag / label for it in addition to the NASA badge.  If I had an "Apollo" badge for the other side, I would be happier.  I would like to paint the base like the Crawler, but not sure if I can do that well enough.

One thing I did decide upon is a paint scheme for the LM!  While browsing scenes from "Apollo 13" I watched the one where Lovell is explaining to his son about how they will land on the moon, and the model on his son's table is the exact same one I'm working on!  There is a nice shot of the Revell LM, and the paint scheme was exactly what I was looking for.  Look it up on Youtube if you're curious. 

That's it for now.

Gary

Today in Space History:

1963 January 18 - .

• Contract to Bell for two Apollo lunar landing research vehicles - . Nation: USA. Program: Apollo. Spacecraft Bus: Apollo LM. Spacecraft: Apollo LLRV.

• NASA's Flight Research Center (FRC) announced the award of a $3.61 million contract to Bell Aerosystems Company of Bell Aerospace Corporation for the design and construction of two manned lunar landing research vehicles. The vehicles would be able to take off and land under their own power, reach an altitude of about 1,220 meters (4,000 feet), hover, and fly horizontally. A fan turbojet engine would supply a constant upward push of five-sixths the weight of the vehicle to simulate the one-sixth gravity of the lunar surface. Tests would be conducted at FRC.

1966 January 18 - .

• Korolev buried in Red Square - . Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Brezhnev, Bykovsky, Gagarin, Komarov, Nikolayev, Popovich, Titov.

• The urn with Korolev's ashes is placed in the Kremlin Wall by an honor guard of cosmonauts and the highest leaders of the state. Kamanin knows that the like of Korolev will not be seen again. There are dozens of Chief Designers, but none with the genius, talent, and drive of Korolev. Kamanin worries for the future in the space race with the Americans. Even in life, Korolev was never able to achieve more than one or two spaceflights per year. Now, in 1966, they are supposed to achieve four times that flight rate without him.

1969 January 18 - .

• Landing of Soyuz 5 - . Return Crew: Volynov. Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Belyayev, Brezhnev, Mishin, Volynov. Program: Soyuz. Flight: Soyuz 4/5, Soyuz 5.

• After Shatalov and Yeliseyev transferred to Soyuz 4, Volynov remained behind to live through the most unbelievable re-entry in the history of spaceflight. The service module of the Soyuz failed to separate after retrofire. Once the Soyuz started reaching the tendrils of the atmosphere, the combined spacecraft sought the most aerodynamically stable position - nose forward, with the heavy descent module with its light metal entry hatch at the front, the less dense service module with its flared base to the back. Luckily the struts between the descent and service modules broke off or burned through before the hatch melted through and the descent module righted itself, with the heat shield to the rear, before being consumed. Due to a failure of the soft-landing rockets the landing was harder than usual and Volynov broke his teeth. The landing came at 7:58 GMT.
  

Gary, that looks cool! Are you going with a dark base to accent the white of the capsule?

Gamera>  Yes, probably a dark gray.  If I can find some reasonable photos, I would try to make something "resembling" the top of the LUT, the transporter / crawler for the Apollo spacecraft.  We'll see.

http://jleslie48.com/lut480/cs.html

Gary

Sorry, yeah you said you were going with a look like the deck of the crawler ealier. Sounds good!

Hi,

I finished playing around with the base for my build.  I've recently been experimenting with different paints and washes, since washes are something I haven't tried before.  Anyway I am very happy how the base turned out, though some of the washes bled over through my tape onto the wood frame.  As such, I mat try and either paint or stain the wood to help cover that up.  In addition when I put the tape down over the frame it looks like I inadvertantly overlapped part of the base, resulting in a thin white stripe along the upper edge.  If I paint or stain the frame I'm hoping that I will be able to hide that little glitch along the way.  

For this base, as I may have noted previously, I bought the frame with a sandy brown backing off eBay.  Originally I was thinking of gluing down a fine grit piece of sand paper to approximate a dry lake bed surface.  But eventually I decided to use my 3D printer to print out some interlocking shapes to represent sections of a runway or taxi way.

I coated these printed pieces with some Tamya white primer and some sanding sealer, before applying a coupl different shades of gray craft store acrylic paints.  After that I added the yellow stripe (also craft store acrylic) and then played around with some different Testors Washes.  These included a grey wash, a black wash, and a "natural" wash.

The grey wash went one thin (I think because I hadn't shaken it up enough).  I liked the effect it gave, but wanted to darken everything up a bit, so I did a second coat with the black wash.  That wash went on very dark, so I let it set for a minute or two then lightly wiped and blotted the surface down with a napkin.  To hide any streak marks for wiping the surface down I dipped a small sponge brush into some thiner and brushed on a light coat, and then set the frame on its side, to let any excess drip to one side.

I then filled in the gaps between the base sections with Squadron Gray Putty and a top coat of some craft store deep grey acrylic, to try and approximate the grouting or filler (or whatever it is) that you sometimes see in the expansion joints between large concrete sections.

After that I did a similar coat of the light brown "natrual" wash, that I also wiped down with a napkin and a light coat of thinner, followed by letting everything dry with the base propped on its side.

Basically, since I don't have an airbrush and have never had a lot of luck with spray cans, I mostly just use a nice soft brush for painting, and one of those sponge type brushes for occassional special stuff, where suitable.

Overall though I'm pleasantly surprised with how everything turned out, since alot of what I was doing was really just experimented with different stuff.  And I intentionally tried to make the surfaces, joints, and overall appearance have a little bit of a "rough/non-perfect" appearance in the hopes that it might look a little bit more realistic that way. 

Now I can't wait to finish up the mini shuttle so I can mount it to the base .

PF

[you can click for a closer view]

The bases are looking good Gary and PFJN!

Gary your Apollo is coming along nicely!

Not much new here, I'm starting to plan the rest of the build. I did dry fitting to see whats in the future.

I'm almost finished the retro pack. The decaling should be fun!

Next up is some painting. The cockpit will be mostly grey. I'll see if Tamiya grey primer

looks good. Maybe gunship grey.

PFJN> I think the base turned out great.  Looks like concrete!  I expect the shuttle or X-24B will look nice sitting on it.  You can stain the wood to cover any imperfections, or paint it.

Mach71>  Thanks!  My base still has a lot of work to be done.  Appears your Mercury capsule is coming along.  Glad the heat shield is together, and good luck with those decals!  They look rather complicated.  Oh, and I didn't know the capsule came with a figure, or is that an extra?

Gary

Gary, nice work on the Saturn CSM. It's cool to see how the LM fits in there.

PF, the base is looking good.

Mach, cool looking capsule. That thing is huge.

Gary, I agree with Steve. That is cool to see how LM sits in there. That will look so cool when done up with paint.

PF, that base looks really good. Nice job with paint to get that concrete look.I am taking notes.

Mach, what a nice kit that is. It has really clean detail. I love how that instrument panel is clear. It lends itself to some real cool backlighting, if a person chose to. The astronaut is a clean cast too. Lots of possibilities. it's coming together nicely. I can't wait to see it with more paint.

Thanks.

The Astronaut is vinyl, I'm guessing normal priming/painting?

Gary, 

Not much to help you here, but I was going through my old photos.

From the Saturn V center in Florida.

Mach71>  Nice photo!  I do have some shots like this of the Saturn V in Houston, but they're missing some shots on top.  I think that there's a couple of access panels I'm missing, and I believe they may actually be on the top of the LM storage area.  Too bad they don't have a camera installed that shows the thing from above!

Thanks for posting that image!

Gary

I know at least one of these I had posted before, But there might be something usefull to you.

These are from Houston.

Sadly I did not get the instrument ring, sorry.

If any are helpful I can email the full sized photo to you.

As for my Mercury capsule, I did manage to finish masking the instrument panel, and I got a coat of Tamiya grey primer on.

I've never done any vinyl work before, I'm guessing regular primer and paints

will work? Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Mark

Vinyl is tricky to paint. Very little sticks to it paint wise and can be a PIA. I had a Iron Man suit that had vinyl fists that no matter what I tired, the paint would come off when I handled it, same thing with vinyl tracks, once you paint them you can't really handel them much.

If I recall, laquer worked best.

mach71

I've never done any vinyl work before, I'm guessing regular primer and paints

will work? Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

Mark

 

I don't have personal experience painting vinyl, but here is what I have read about it. You will of course want to wash it before you paint.

You might want to avoid using a solvent-borne primer on the vinyl. The solvents could dissolve the plasticizer in the vinyl, which in turn leaches into the paint, causing it to dry soft and sticky. Of course, results may vary depending on the specific makeup of the vinyl and paint. Once the primer is on, it will protect the vinyl and you no longer have to worry about it.

Common advice is to prime with an acrylic primer. Some of the wargaming painters use rattle cans by Army Painter or Citadel/Games Workshop. If you have a wargaming store near you, ask them what they use. They frequently paint vinyl figures from Reaper Bones.

Hypertex

Mark>  Thanks for the photos!  Those are good, but they don't have the resolution I need.  The area in which I'm interested is between the Instrument Unit and the folding panels.  I think the things I'm looking for are either on the top or bottom.  The inside view (which shows a great view of the Service Module heat shield) appears to have a hatch (access panel) at the bottom, but I can't quite make it out.  I think it still behooves me to make a personal trip up to Huntsville and see for myself. 

Unfortunately, I have no idea about painting vinyl.  Hypertex probably has the best advice.

Gary

PS> After looking at the photo again, I think that access hatch is one in the folding door panel, and not the SLA.

Where the arrow points is where the face of the instrument panel sits, roughly so. That means you might be able to see the back side of the panel looking in. I decided that some additional detail is needed. Basically--I simulated the back gauges with harnessing.

Using a chopper, I dissected 3/64" (1.2mm) Evergreen styrene rod. Then--using a sewing needle I punched holes that will accommodate 30 awg wire. 

I glued them in orientation to the forward side of the PE gauges... as best I can. They are not exact--that is for sure.

Finally, paint is applied. I might give it a shot of flat as well.

And that concludes my weekend with the X-1.

Nice job on the Instrument's .

But, I'm curious.....

Were all the wire's Black on the real thing ?  ( I would have painted them Red, and Blue, and Green.... ect. )

Not trying to be a Pita.... just saying

that looks like some tedious work, but very nice looking. If seen, it will really make the ship.

modelcrazy

that looks like some tedious work, but very nice looking. If seen, it will really make the ship.

 

Thanks Steve

littletimmy

Nice job on the Instrument's .

But, I'm curious.....

Were all the wire's Black on the real thing ?  ( I would have painted them Red, and Blue, and Green.... ect. )

Not trying to be a Pita.... just saying

 

I have no idea. I was unable to find an authentic photo. All I could find was another builder and he/she did the same as I did. I could easily paint them different colors. That would sure stand out. Maybe someone with such knowledge could chime in. There is other instrumentation that I did not wire. I only wired the main gauges. Again, it's a pretty loose representation.

Bakster>  Maybe these?  https://ninetalis.com/walkarounds/aircraft/bell-x-1-glamorous-glennis/

And boy!  That's a beautiful instrument panel!

Gary

Time for another update.

Project Report:

I've been doing some minor stuff.  I've given the top of the interior of the Service Module some detailing by painting the wires and cables in various colors.  I'm not sure about accuracy, but its not unreasonable.  (Of course, the top is not accurate anyway, so...)  I also scratchbuilt a couple of "antenna" that go on the side of the Service Module which were lost somewhere in time.  The LM is beging prepped for paint, next suitable weather period.  3 of the folding doors are being glued together, while the 4th one will be removable to reveal the LM inside.  The doors will just sit on the LM Storage Area so they can be removed for LM access.

The interior of the Command Module is being worked on.  The astronaut figures have been taken apart, cleaned up and re-glued.  They need a little putty before final paint.  I'm going to add some detail to the seats, included padding, hand controllers and struts.  I need a new color ink cartridge to print out the instrument panels I intend to place on the interior, plus decals.

Things are coming close to primer, but there's a long way to go yet.

Mission Director (GAF)

Today in Space History:

1930 January 20 -

• Birth of Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin - . Nation: USA. Related Persons: Aldrin. American test pilot astronaut. Flew on Gemini 12, Apollo 11. Second person on the moon.

        HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BUZZ!

1967 January 20 - . Launch Vehicle: Saturn V.

• Apollo S-IVB stage for Saturn launch vehicle 503 exploded - . Nation: USA. Program: Apollo.

• The Saturn 503 S-IVB stage exploded and was destroyed at the Douglas Sacramento, Calif., Test Facility at 4:25 p.m. PST during a countdown. The exercise had progressed to 10 seconds before simulated launch (about 8 minutes before S-IVB ignition) when the explosion occurred.
  

1969 January 20 - . 04:14 GMT - . Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Complex: Baikonur LC81/23. LV Family: Proton. Launch Vehicle: Proton-K/D. FAILURE: Second stage - One RD-0210 engine fails at T+510 sec, resulting in flight path deviation, automatic shutoff of launch vehicle.. Failed Stage: 2.

• Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 13L - . Payload: Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 13L. Mass: 5,390 kg (11,880 lb). Nation: Russia. Related Persons: Mishin, Smirnov, Ustinov. Agency: RVSN. Program: Lunar L1. Class: Manned. Type: Manned spacecraft. Spacecraft Bus: Soyuz. Spacecraft: Soyuz 7K-L1. Decay Date: 1969-01-19 .

• Launch failure - but the abort system again functioned perfectly, taking the capsule to a safe landing (in Mongolia!). At 501 seconds into the flight one of the four engines of the second stage shut down, and remained shut down for 25 seconds. The ever-reliable SAS abort system detected the failure, and separated the capsule from the failed booster. Yet again a successful capsule recovery after a booster failure.

Bakster

I have no idea. I was unable to find an authentic photo.

I couldn't find any picture's of the back of the pannel. So I guess I spoke to soon.

I now return you to your regularly schedualed programme.

GAF

Bakster>  Maybe these?  https://ninetalis.com/walkarounds/aircraft/bell-x-1-glamorous-glennis/

And boy!  That's a beautiful instrument panel!

Gary

 

 

Hey, thanks for the kind words Gary. AND, thanks for the link. Though I didn’t find any photos that settle the issue, there are some fantastic reference photos I can use for other things. I bookmarked it for sure. Thanks again!

littletimmy

I couldn't find any picture's of the back of the pannel. So I guess I spoke to soon.

I now return you to your regularly schedualed programme.

 

Thanks for noting that, Tim. The truth is is that any detail I made will most likely get lost in all that black.

Bakster> You're welcome!  I saw some cabling that was black, some yellowish.  Guess your guess is good. 

Oh, and here's some photos taken many, many, many years ago of a certain event called Apollo 16.  I have an album of these, and I intend to post them over the next few months leading up to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.  These were all taken by me from the TV (as you can see in the third shot).  I think I only had an old Kodak Brownie so please excuse the grainy appearance.  The date on the photos is when they were printed, something that helps date them.  Hope you like them.

LIVE FROM THE MOON

Gary

GAF

Project Report: I've been doing some minor stuff.  I've given the top of the interior of the Service Module some detailing by painting the wires and cables in various colors.  I'm not sure about accuracy, but its not unreasonable.  (Of course, the top is not accurate anyway, so...)  I also scratchbuilt a couple of "antenna" that go on the side of the Service Module which were lost somewhere in time.  The LM is beging prepped for paint, next suitable weather period.  3 of the folding doors are being glued together, while the 4th one will be removable to reveal the LM inside.  The doors will just sit on the LM Storage Area so they can be removed for LM access.

Progress is good, Gary. Watching...

Bakster

The wires I made represent wire bundles. It’s crude, but I was hoping to fill any voids that might be seen, rather than a blank rear panel.

No, It's not "crude" to my eye. Look's dead-on !

I would have "Hollywooded" it up a bit , but that's just me.

Bakster

The truth is is that any detail I made will most likely get lost in all that black.

Your at least going to put Gum under the pannel .... aren't you ???