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GWH Shenzhou & Tiangong in 1/48th


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The build thread is http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234949383-great-wall-hobby-148-tiangong-shenzhou-spacecraft/#entry1469192 though it only covers the first part. Apologies to the three people who were following it...

Anyway, the model is finished!

According to the box, it represents the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft, which was unmanned: since it docked with the Tiangong 1 space station two manned flights have visited, but as far as I can ascertain there were few visible differences between the three spacecraft so the model could really be any of them.

The Shenzhou is on a sliding stand so the model can be displayed with the two vehicles separated or docked together. However it turns out that both craft are tail-sitters! The solar panels cause them both to sit with a slight nose-up attitude, meaning that when they're shown linked up the docking collars don't quite meet face to face. Gluing them permanently together would fix that, of course, but I'd rather not do that.

On to the pictures:

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Spacecraft shown just before docking. (Or just after undocking, I suppose...)

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Shenzhou. The similarity to the Russian Soyuz capsule has been pointed out many times, but in fact it more closely resembles an early Soyuz design which had a cylindrical Orbital Module.

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Tiangong space station. Not unlike the military version of the Salyut.

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Propulsion section of the Tiangong.

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Main body of the Tiangong with communications antenna. The actual Chinese flags are a much deeper red than they seem to be in this photo.

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Tiangong docking collar, plus the rendezvous target at bottom centre.

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Shianzhou's docking collar.

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And its engines.

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More national markings, these on the Re-entry Module.

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Sorry about the blurring - this is a close-up of the docking collars just before link-up.

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Docking achieved!

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Tiangong seen from below. I'm not sure what the large circular objects are - probably Earth-survey cameras or similar.

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Beneath the Shenzhou,

A nice kit, fairly straightforward to build though there are a lot of tiny parts which might prove frustrating for the novice modeller. (They certainly were for me!) But I'm pleased with the result, though the solar panels are going to make it hard to find somewhere to put it...

Edited by GordonD
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I decided some time back that Keith doesn't really build those models - nobody could be that good.

He has a stealth spacecraft which he flies into orbit and takes photos of the real things without anybody noticing, then pretends they're just models!

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