Eric Mc

Finished. A neat little kit with virtually no filler required. It's not 100% accurate but it is good enough for me. The only significant changes I made were the cutting out of the window apertures and I also fabricated a representation of the Infra Red Horizon Sensor. Gemini uses this device to "know" what way up it was pointing - crucial before firing its orbital manoeuvering rocket motors. The kit depicts this device as it is during launch i.e. under a streamlined fairing. The fairing was jettisoned immediately after orbit was achieved to allow the device to see the horizon so you would not see the fairing in any pictures of a Gemini in orbit.. My tribute to Ed White and what he accomplished a half century ago. Also, another excuse to buy some Rolos

Impressive. I bet you need a ladder to photograph the Launch Escape System. I saw one of these built up at Telford and the strangest odd thing are the raised lines on the Lunar Module Adaptor. What did they base those on because I've never seen them on a real Saturn V.

You should know me by now that there is no way I would want to denigrate anybody who works in the space business - especially those who are responsible for looking after and ensuring that manned missions are as safe as possible. On the whole, the Shuttle's problems had little to do with those who worked on it, looked after it and readied it for flight. It's problems lay in the basic concept. It was flawed. There is little doubt that no agency will ever again commission a spacecraft that features a manned component of the craft attached to the side of a rocket. It is just asking for trouble - and ensures that effective and realistic abort systems are difficult if not impossible to design into the system. And there is no doubt that the two Shuttles that were lost were lost due to poor decision making at top management level. I have read enough now on the Shuttle programme to know where the problems were. And I have listened to and watched enough documentaries to understand how the programme evolved over time and how it went through phases when maybe some of the standards by which manned operations should be carried out were allowed to take a lower priority as political and commercial pressures were brought to bear. NASA made the right decision to retire the Shuttle as quickly as they could after Columbia was destroyed in 2003. They have now got a good plan which I think will really further true manned space exploration. It's only flaw is that budgetary constraints mean it is going forward at too slow a pace for me. Those pictures are fantastic by the way and I will certainly refer to them when doing my next Shuttle project (I have a few planned)

Most "DC-3s" built weren't DC-3s. Most were either C-47 or R4D Skytrains (called Dakotas in RAF service). The civil DC-3 was a pre-war airliner - sometimes with Wright Cyclones and with a small passenger door. About 800 were built The militarised C-47s had a strengthened floor and a large cargo door for freight loading. Of course, after WW2 many C-47/R4D/Dakotas were "civillianised to carry passengers but retained much of their inherent C-47 characteristics. Somewhere around 12,000 C-47s were built.

I'll correct the above comment - "Mankind chooses to ditch a fatally flawed, dangerous and inefficient form of engineering" - and decides to replace it with a new space vehicle that will actually take people somewhere beyond low earth orbit. Lovely Shuttle by the way (I see the pictures were posted five years ago).

Thanks for the reply. Another question - the plaque. Did you make that yourself?

That looks really nice. What paint did you use on the main rocket body? The shade of R7 rockets is a bit debatable as Soviet colour photo technology tended to give the rockets a green tint.

Camo is not totally fanciful. When Von Braun first envisaged the Saturn in the mid 1950s, he was still working for the US Army and he tried to justify funding for such a big booster as a means of transportinng crack troops around the world very quickly. The Army weren't altogether convinced and were ready to pull the plug on the Von Braun team when NASA stepped in and had them transferred in their entirety to NASA.

Fast work Some of the fit issues have been caused by the fact that the basic model was modified in 1980 to turn it into a "Snap and Fit" model (not one of Airfix's better ideas). Over time, the extra lugs and locating pins added to the engine bell components have worn and now hinder the fit rather than help it. I just cut the locating pins off. It made a big difference

BORING? How dare you That is the most iconic colour scheme ever carried by a rocket. In fact, it's so iconic that all of the CGI animations of the new SLS system show the rocket in Saturn V style markings. My hunch is that the SLS won't actually carry those colours. How about depicting your Saturn V as it might have looked twenty years later - if NASA had never gone ahead with the Shuttle. My theory is that the Saturn V could have been used as NASA's heavy launcher until at least the mid 1990s (or pehaps even up to today). If it had, its appearance would have changed over time as different and more lightweight materials and insulation techniques were used. My theory is that the top two stages (which contain liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks) might have ended up covered in the orange coloured insulation material as used on the Shuttle external tank - or on some modern versions of the Atlas and Delta.

After a brief hiatus due to performing on stage all of last week, it's back to the Gemini spacecraft. I've primed and painted the internal parts and started on the two crew. I discovered to some consternation that only one of the crew has been supplied with a set of arms. I don't know what went wrong there. So, to rectify the situation I decided, rather than try and scratchbuild some arms for the "armless one", I'd swap his head onto a fully armed alternative. It so happens that it is the seated astronaut inside the capsule who has been left devoid of appendages. Therefore, I decided that it didn't really matter if his body was not fully fitted out as an astronaut. The hatch will be closed over on him so he will mostly be invisible in the cockpit. He may need a bit of fettling in order to ensure the lid closes down over his head. The Gemini capsule was extremely cramped inside. The other "floating" astronaut is fully equipped in the limb department and one of his hands is holding the small gas manoeuvering device which was tested on Gemini 4 by Ed White. They both need priming and painting so that is today's first job.

At just under €80, I think that's quite good value considering.

Very, very impressive. Is this a "hobby" build or do you build models professionally?

I wasn't going to do anything about them. It's actually a tiny model in 1/72 so I don't think going to town on detailing or correcting is going to pay dividends. The windows are two obvious to ignore though.

Dragon supply three hatches. Two are for setting in the closed position. An extra one features hinges to allow for the hatch to be posed open for the spacewalking astronaut. I've cut one out window aperture. A little bit of tidying is required. You can see how they have been moulded solid by Dragon.

Wire supplied.

1965 sees the 50th anniversary of the start of the US Gemini manned space programme. Gemini was instigated when it was realised that the jump from the very simple Mercury spacecraft to the much more sophisticated and capable Apollo was far too big a leap. It was decided that an interim project was required which would allow NASA to learn how to carry out some basic techniques that would be required for Apollo - orbital manoeuvers, orbital plane changes, rendezvous and docking and Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA or spacewalking). Because the project was put in place very quickly, permission was received from the government to skip the normal competitive tendering process and the design and construction of the spacecraft was allocated to McDonnell - who had also built the Mercury space capsule. The Apollo spacecraft had already been awarded to North American Aviation Inc. The kit I have chosen is the fairly new (2012) 1/72 model released by Dragon. Being modern, it is very neatly moulded using the latest CAD and slide mould techniques. It looks like it will go together really well. Despite its newness, it's not perfect. In particular, I am disappointed in the fact that the forward facing windows of the space capsule are not cut out of the sold plastic. I assume they expect the modeller to just paint a representation of the window on each hatch. I don't think that this is satisfactory and I will chain drill and cut our (carefully) proper window apertures and either use Crystal Clear or Acetate to represent a proper window. The kit is arranged to represent Ed White's spacewalk on Gemini 4 in 1965. You get two astronaut figures which, for some odd reason, are moulded in bendy polythene rather than hard polystyrene.

The Haynes Apollo 13 book is written by Dr David Baker - which is always a good recommendation.

Thanks. I made it about four years ago. It was a very difficult build and paint/decal job.

Also highly recommended is the DVD box set "From the Earth to the Moon".

Next up should be the Dragon 1/72 Gemini. I'm suffering from a rotten cold at the moment so not really up to much just now.

And took an enormous risk. Indeed, it's still a dangerous thing to do.

And they aren't going to bother recovering and refurbishing them either. The cost of doing that outweighs the advantages and they save weight leaving off the parachutes and related systems - thus allowing more payload. And, of course, if one of these SRBs failed during a launch, at least the crew will have an escape system that should save them.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome - and it's nice having the 1/144 constant scale for comparison. The Jupiter is the old Revell Redstone kit which I converted and that's more like 1/120.

Build here - http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234975813-airfix-1144-saturn-v/