Rob de Bie

Thanks! it's moving slowly though.. A club member printed a few wall elements in 1/72 scale. They look great, but I made them too 'flat', they need more depth. Luckily that's easy to do in CAD. Following the rule that a diorama should not align with its sides. I've cut the edges of the surrounding moon surface at an angle. And indeed that looks better. I've also made a concept for the flood lights, that I want to build around SMD LEDs. It will be very, very delicate in 1/100 scale, and the wiring will be a challenge. Rob

Indeed 'E' is for 'ecole', school or training. 'A' is for 'appui' or attack, Rob

I decided to make heavy paper mockups in 1/72, 1/100 and 1/144 scales (left to right). For scale I used a standard Humbrol tin as the monolith. The 1/72 version was so large that I skipped the surrounding moon surface. It was amazingly large, too large to my taste; it would result in an A1 size diorama. The 1/100 version looked like I had imagined the diorama. It would be A2 size. The 1/144 version was a bit to small for me. It would be A3 size. Another view of the 1/100 version. Rob

Sabrejet, good to hear you know how it works 🙂 I've done military markings as well as race cars, many many more than shown on the 'Custom decal design service' webpage that I linked to earlier. Like half the field of the 1993 Indy season. I never got complaints about the decal quality, and I think they look excellent 🙂 However, custom decals are generally dither printed, not silkscreen printed. So if you zoom in, you will see dots instead of solid colours. It can be avoided that by using the old Alps printer, but then your colour palette is limited. I can work with both. John, thanks for your recommendation! The waiting time for your decals was excessive, since SpotModel (the custom printer that I use mostly) had their printer out of action, followed by an enormous backlog when the new printer went online. That was stressful for me too, since I needed my own decals for an upcoming model show. 😞 As a teaser, here's another recent project: Rob

Thanks for the enthousiasm guys! 🙂 A small warning: custom decals are expensive. It's mostly the time spent on the design. The printing (outsourced in my case) is relatively cheap. So it takes a commitment to have a single custom decal sheet done. Many plans for custom decals fail to take that hurdle, in my experience.. Rob

If your question hasn't been answered yet, I've been doing decal design for more than twenty years now. I'm not in the UK, but on the other side of the North Sea. Time permitting, I do custom decal design work for other modellers, for a fee. On average, I do one or two assignments per year. Here's my most recent car project, a full decal set for a Porsche 935K3. And here's an example of the decals applied to a model, the old Revell 1/72 F-16: More information can be found here: https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/customdecals.htm Rob

In the mean time I had a 1/72 paper version of the walls and ramps printed. And it's huge 🙂 I will also do 1/100 and 1/144 versions. Also I need to check the 'printability' of the 1/32 astronauts at those scales, and figure out whether I can build working spotlight with SMD LEDs. Rob

Dale, thanks for your extensive reply! The STL-files can be reduced to any scale desired, until you reach the limits of what's printable. My current calculations show a 42 x 17.5 x 7.5 m pit, or 138 x 57’ x 25’ in imperial units. Very roughly shoebox size in 1/100 scale. Mock-upping is definitely called for, for the reasons you mention. Thanks too for checking your 2001 books. I will work from the screen shots, with their limitations. I found a site with 100s of BlueRay screengrabs, pretty amazing: https://movie-screencaps.com/2001-space-odyssey-1968/ Maybe I'll get a first 1/72 test print of a single pit wall panel, ~18 hours from now, at a club meeting 🙂 Rob

Hamiltonian, thanks for checking your references! I think I saw at least a few in this massive 2001 photo collection: https://www.flickr.com/photos/2001archive/. But as you say, they don't match the final movie set, so they are of limited value for my diorama plans. Rob

Yoshizakura, thanks for the suggestion. I think I will mock-up two scales, to see the overall sizes. Rob

James and bentwaters81tfw, thanks for the confirmation! Corsairfoxfouruncle, if you want to start casting, I happen to have a tutorial on my website: https://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/casting.htm Here's the result of the most recent casting session. Rob

Matt, thanks! Indeed I found the parts in the instruction sheet on Scalemates: https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/4/2/3/111423-41-instructions.pdf If anyone knows another kit with these racks, please let me know! Rob

Are there any B-17 kits that have the external bomb racks, in any scale? Here's a webpage on the subject: http://axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?10679 I looked around in the instruction sheets of various kit at Scalemates, but saw none. Thank in advance for any information! Rob

I've always loved the moon excavation chapter in '2001', and thought a few times of building a diorama of it. It would be a large undertaking with nearly everything scratch-built, so it never progressed past thinking about it. That was, until a few days ago, when I found a great set of figures for 3D printing: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/miniatures/figurines/vintage-lunar-astronaut-set That made me reconsider building that diorama. Still a ton of work, but with some 3D printing and resin casting, it might be do-able. Three questions: 1st question: what scale would be most logical in the SF modelling world? As a mostly aircraft builder my first idea is 1/72, but maybe 1/96 is more standard? I'm thinking of Revell space models in that scale. 2nd question: did anyone here attempt the same diorama idea? I'm very interested to learn from it. 3rd question: were any drawings of the moon excavation published in the 2001 reference books (of which I have none)? Rob

You probably mean they were pressurised with air, and a gauge told the crew whether a crack had developed? I have been thinking about a stand-alone chassis made from soldered Albion micro-tubing, that would allow the use of different sizes of tubing. I even drew some jigs that would be required. I know what sizes tubing were used, but not where, that stopped the plan.. Rob