Hamiltonian

Still waiting for my promised replacement umbilical fairing, and reluctant to start decalling the Service Module before I have that in place. In the meantime, I concocted some feedhorns using 0.25mm fibreoptics with ends melted into blobs and then painted white. So now I have some fairly nice looking HGA dishes, but the suspicion has grown in me that the support rod on The Aerospace Place part is too long. So I scanned David Weeks's drawing and printed it half-size to produce a visual comparison: As you can see, the dish array itself is quite nicely scaled, but the support rod needs to lose about 5mm in length. Easily done, though slightly annoying. But it also looks like I might have all my feedhorns positioned on the wrong dish ribs, dammit---36 degrees out. That's really annoying.

Decent size, too, at 14 inches across. Considerably bigger than Fantastic Plastic's version, but not a disaster in terms of display space. Not loving the stand, but that can be addressed.

While waiting for my revised umbilical tunnel to arrive, I've moved on to the 3D printed High Gain Antenna array from The Aerospace Place, which is correctly scaled. (The RealSpace kit doesn't include a HGA, and suggests using the Revell kit part. Unfortunately, that's severely undersized, and is one of the many things that rankled about my original build.) One problem with this part is working out the correct colours. David Weeks's drawings call for the receiving dishes to be black all over---both mesh and supporting ribs---whereas photographs of the item held at the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Oklahoma show the dishes ribbed and rimmed in a very pale, slightly metallic-looking shade. Of course, the real thing that flew on the Apollo missions may have been painted differently from the unused museum piece, and photographs of real CSMs seem to show the HGA ribbed in black, as Weeks suggests. But looking through CSM images from Apollo 11 (the flight I'm modelling) suggests that the appearance depends on whether the dishes are in sunlight or shadow. Here are details from successive images AS11-37-5443 and AS11-37-5444, showing the dish ribs looking very pale when illuminated, and dark when shadowed. So I decided to finish my kit part with pale ribs and dark mesh. This is a bit awkward at 1/96 scale, but I've used some Xtradecal fine white lines (I think about 0.25mm) to produce neat ribbing, and have finished the mesh areas (solid in the printed part) with a light layer of LifeColor Smoke weathering over pale primer, to try to give the impression of the real dark mesh. The Aerospace Place part doesn't include the feedhorns for the dishes, but I aim to add them myself later.

So I printed up some decals for the coloured patches around the Command Module RCS thrusters. These were a nice dark brick red on the decal sheet, but of course are somewhat transparent, allowing the bright metal finish to gleam through a little. Unfortunately, this emphasizes the red tones more than I wanted. They're pretty well bedded down, and I don't really fancy trying to strip them off again. I suppose there's the potential for recolouring the decals, printing a new sheet, and laying the darker version on top of the existing decals, but I'm not confident that'll improve the situation.

And in another development, Michael from The Aerospace Place just got back to me to say Wow, that is oversized. He's undertaken to fix the problem in the next couple of days. I might still do a bit of work on the New Ware part while I wait to see how things work out.

Deliberation overnight, like a very slow game of Tetris. I realized that I probably had another 1/96 umbilical tunnel somewhere in the house. The Revell Saturn V CSM doesn't even have an umbilical tunnel, so I figured there must have been one in the New Ware detailing set I used. And I wouldn't have used it on my first RealSpace CSM (with which I replaced the Revell CSM), because I used the tunnel that came with that kit. And I probably would have tipped the odd unused resin bits from New Ware into my "general greeblies" jar. And so I had! Here's a comparison of the three tunnels with Weeks's drawing: The RealSpace is on the left, looking oddly as if it's been whittled rather than moulded. New Ware in the middle, the familiar oversized Aerospace Place version on the right. I'd still like to get a properly scaled version of the Aerospace Place part, but in the meantime I'll do a little work flattening the spine of the New Ware and changing the shape of its inner curve. I can probably add some basic detailing with strip styrene if push comes to shove.

I eventually found a decent photograph of the umbilical tunnel to confirm it seemed to have neither visible rivets or ridges along its outer surface. Here's a detail from Apollo image AS15-88-11961: It does, however, seem to have been curved using a series of flat transverse facets rather than a smooth bend, at least according to the maintenance photos here. However, events have rather overtaken that bit of research, because I find that the Aerospace Place part is significantly oversized. (Disappointing, because the docking probe, RCS quads and HG antenna are not.) It took a while for the penny to drop, but when it did I scanned one of David Weeks's 1/48 drawings and printed it half size. Here's the comparison: So that's annoying. I've used the Shapeways contact facility to flag this with the author of the 3D model. A good outcome would be a new part of the correct size, because I find the prospect of trying to fix up the RealSpace part quite dispiriting, given that I only got into this because of the availability of the 3D printed replacements. (I've just noticed that Shapeways lists two versions of this part available in notional 1/96 scale, but the length difference is only half a millimetre---to match Weeks's drawing, this would need to be a good 3.5mm shorter, and similarly scaled in other dimensions.)

So I got the Command Module successfully coated with AK Interactive's Black Base and Chrome: It produces quite a nice, bright specular reflection, given the fairly poor surface it had to work on: I set it aside for a week to cure, to see if I was going to need to seal it or not. In the meantime, I turned my attention to some more 3-D printed bits from The Aerospace Place: I've already painted these up. The RCS thruster nozzles are finished in a custom mix of Tamiya Flat Aluminium and Bronze to try to suggest the rather complicated finish on the real thing. As their tilt suggests in the photo, they have locating pins on the back, and I used an appropriate drill bit and a pin-vice to produce locating holes in the soft resin of the RealSpace part. I'm not sure about the ribbing on the umbilical tunnel---still looking for photographs to confirm or refute its existence on the real thing when flight-ready. But the part is still a better option than RealSpace's slightly battered-looking version, and I can sand off the ribbing if necessary. I forgot to photograph the nice docking probe replacement, also from The Aerospace Place. Once I'd finished painting it I found I had a slight puzzle---I wasn't sure of its correct orientation relative to the principal axes of the CM. It consists of a triangular array of fairly chunky pitch arms, interleaved with another triangular array of slimmer support beams, making an overall hexagonal pattern that lends itself to having a "right way up" and a "wrong way up" when attached to the front of the CM. I used David Weeks's excellent drawing set from RealSpace to resolve the problem, as well as checking a few real-world photos, like this one from Apollo 17: It shows that if we look at the CSM from the front, with the CM hatch "up", the docking probe is orientated so that the thicker pitch arms form an upright "Y", while the interleaved support beams are in an inverted "Y". After a week, I came back to my CM paint, and was easily able to rub a small area of the flat nose (soon to be covered by my replacement docking probe) down to the black base, using just a couple of firm passes with a cotton bud. So it definitely needed sealed. I used this stuff, which is new to me (as is AK Interactive's stuff generally): Strange name, unpromising colour, but tested out OK on scrap styrene. Difficult to assess the coat as it's applied---shiny wet transparent stuff going on to shiny metallic finish---and I had a bit of a horror of either underdoing it and getting some sort of pebble-dash finish, or having it pool around the base of the CM. But it seemed to go on fine, self-levelling without sagging. Probably more by luck than good judgement. Here's the final result, with the docking probe and RCS quads also in place, and some preliminary painting done around the windows. At appears fairly robust (another rub test with a cotton bud). Difficult to judge from my before and after photos, which were taken under somewhat different lighting conditions, but to my eye, it does remove some of the characteristic specular metallic reflection from the original paint surface, replacing it with a more diffuse glossy appearance. So not as good as I'd heard reported, but not a disaster either, and certainly better than the effect my fingers would have if I'd left the surface unprotected. Perhaps I could have got away with a slightly lighter coat, but that would have brought its own risks. Sigh. Now I need to think about how I'm going to paint the areas around the various Command Module RCS nozzles, which were all bordered in brick-red. I'm considering printing up a decal sheet of appropriately sized brick-red discs with dark centres, but the roll thrusters (the paired recessed ellipses in my photo above) would be problematic to fit properly, I think. The recessed ellipses are probably hand-paintable, but then can I get my printed decals on the pitch and yaw thrusters to match my paint?

This is the resin 1/96 Block II CSM from RealSpace, intended as a replacement for the Block I CSM provided with the Revell 1/96 Saturn V. (As you can see, it comes with a rather blurry vacformed Boost Protective Cover, too.) I actually built one of these a few years ago, as part of my endless Saturn V build: I was never particularly satisfied with the result. The RealSpace kit provided no Service Module RCS or High Gain Antenna, necessitating the use of the Revell kit parts---the RCS parts are OK, but the HGA is hideously undersized. And my Bare-Metal Foil covering for the CM needed holes punched to reveal the thrusters, which I struggled to position accurately at this scale. Also, too much red. I've had as second one in the stash for years now and, having discovered that Shapeways has a selection of 3D-printed replacement parts, decided I'd take another run at it. I'm led to understand that the RealSpace kit has evolved somewhat since I bought mine, but mine has only three parts: CSM in one chunk, aft heatshield and SPS bell in another, and the umbilical tunnel as a third. The CSM part had a number of problems. The docking probe was damaged in both my kits: The spaces within the probe are full of flash, which is difficult to remove without causing damage. In my original build, I partially rebuilt the probe with styrene rod. This time I plan to sand it off and replace it with a nice 3D print from The Aerospace Place, via Shapeways. The scimitar antennae on the SM are likewise AWOL, though these would be impossibly fragile objects in resin even if present: I'm addressing this with photoetch parts from a New Ware aftermarket set for the Revell Saturn V. I bought a partial set on E-bay from someone who'd obviously lost heart halfway through a build, and fortunately for me was working their way from the bottom up, so all the CSM parts are still present. (New Ware does a photoetch set of parts just for the CSM, but as far as I can see it doesn't include the SM umbilical attachment that comes with the full Saturn V kit.) And the pour surface has a lot of bubbles and surface defects that need filled and sanded: One problem with this area of the model that I don't have the moral fortitude to address is that the SM doesn't extend far enough behind the rear radiator panels---presumably it got shortened when the pour surface was being tidied up for shipping. My original kit arrived with a bit more rearward extension, but only in the form of a sort of meniscus. At the time, I removed this and ended up with a spacecraft that ended at the rear radiators, as you'll see in my photos above. I toyed with the idea of building up the rear of this one using styrene and filler, but bottled it. At least there is some hull visible behind the radiators this time. The raised panels around the hatch and optics penetration of the Command Module are wrong---these features should be flush with the rest of the hull. I sanded them down and replaced with New Ware photoetch detail, with a little sliver of styrene strip for the hatch handle, which New Ware omits. Not quite flush, but better. You can also see the photoetch SM umbilical connector from the New Ware set. And the now-vanished docking mechanism. And a glimpse of one of the photoetch scimitar antennae. I'd given the photoetch a light coat of Tamiya white primer before fitting, and now I gave the whole lot a coat of the same thing, which was also going to provide the white colour for the radiator panels. I masked these with Bare-Metal Foil, which I could conform to the raised edges of the panels, and cut to shape easily with a fresh scalpel blade: Better view of a replacement scimitar antenna, there. And of the foreshortened rear that I chickened out of fixing. I masked the scimitar antennae, which are also white, with a couple of little strips of Bare-Metal Foil just before painting. I'm using AK Interactive Xtreme Metal for the CM and SM finishes---new to me. A little experimentation on scrap styrene revealed that their Aluminium binds robustly to the Tamiya primer. The Chrome for the CM needs their Black Base, but I found that, after a few days left to cure, the metallic finish dulled and then wore through to the base with even minimal handling. It certainly didn't like Tamiya masking tape, either. So I decided I'd mask off the Command Module and paint the Service Module, then mask off the more robust SM paint to apply the black base and Chrome finish to the CM. Meanwhile, I painted up a 3D printed aft heatshield and SMS nozzle from The Aerospace Place, which provides more detail and fewer flaws than the RealSpace resin part. The heatshield is finished in Xtreme Metal Chrome and Gold---I used Bare-Metal Foil, gently applied, to mask off the Chrome when spraying the gold on the SPS flexible boot, and got away without damaging the surface. The other surfaces are Tamiya---with a concoction of Dark Iron and Red Brown mixed by eye and prayer for the darker part of the nozzle. You can also see one of the two styrene panels I scratchbuilt to detail the rear of the CM on either side of the heatshield. After a day or so, I decided the Xtreme Metal Chrome was too bright. I also managed to wear through the finish on the shoulders of the part, while I was gently adjusting its position before the glue dried. So I ended up brush-painting it in situ with Tamiya Chrome: In this view you can see that there's a little surface texture from the printing process on the sides of the heatshield, which I haven't quite managed to eliminate. Below, you can glimpse the two fill-and-drain ports on either side of the heatshield. One disadvantage of the 3D printed part is that these ports don't quite align with the corresponding ports in the Revell kit SLA---they're too far apart. The RealSpace part matches exactly, which is a point in its favour. So, now I need to paint the Command Module, let it cure for a while, and then give it a coat of AK Interactive's Intermediate Gauzy Agent Shine Enhancer---I've seen this demonstrated and it looks like it'll preserve the bright Chrome finish, while giving me a surface I can actually touch from time to time, and (I hope) decal without damage. A bottle is winging its way to me even as I type.

Nice. I have one of these in the stash, but have been avoiding it ever since I struggled with the Airfix Widgeon, of similar vintage I think, which eventually turned on to short finals to the bin. Glad to see yours has come together so nicely. Maybe I'll give mine a go after all. But then if it goes wrong I won't now be able to blame the kit ...

Thanks for the tips. I actually used a couple of screenshots of the 4K movie when making my Discovery model---it was the only way I could check the "real" appearance of the dish antennae, which Moebius gets wrong.

Nice. Mine has rather more visible panel shading than I've been able to photograph. Maybe I should fiddle with the contrast and brightness in "post-production", rather than trying to trick my wee automatic camera into taking a representative photograph. The case comes from a UK company called Lasacryl: https://www.acrylicdisplaycases.co.uk/about-us/ They do a really good job, but they're expensive when it comes to an object this size. In retrospect, if I'd known this was going to end up in a case, I'd have shortened the stands a little, so that the model sat a bit lower, allowing a case that was closer to a square cross section. The base comes neatly covered with baize, both interior and underside, which might complicate matters if you need a solid bond between stands and base. My stands are just glued to the baize, which is fine for display purposes (I occasionally lift the model on and off), but I certainly wouldn't trust that for transport.

Ah-ha. Many thanks for your help! (In case anyone's wondering about the caravan being towed by the lead truck in one of the photographs above---it was an optimistic inclusion at best, and ended up being shipped home from Algiers after the British Consul refused the party permission to tow it into the Sahara.)

Thanks. As I said, I was pretty sure they were CMP, and interpreted Dorothy's "Chev" to mean Chevrolet. But there seem to have been a fair variety of vehicles in that category, and I wondered if a more specific identification was possible.

I'm currently reading a memoir of a drive from Blackpool to Durban in 1947 (Legacy, by Dorothy Topping, compiled by her daughter Irene). The group of "trekkers" bought a couple of four-wheel drive ex-miltary vehicles that Dorothy describes only as "'Chev' Radio trucks". She says that "all the radio equipment was removed" and replaced with bunks and storage space. So no mention of a major rebuild. From photos and newspaper clippings, these look to be CMP trucks with a cargo body, presumably of Chevrolet manufacture. From the "radio" bit and my tiny knowledge I guessed they were going to be Chevrolet C8A HUW, but the configuration of the rear seems wrong. Can anyone with more knowledge than I (which is to say, anyone at all) make an identification? There are a number of other images in the book, and I might be able to find specific views if they're needed.

Thanks for the recommendation. I haven't rigged a ship model in decades, but replying to this thread sent me into that section of my bookshelves again, and I'm beginning to feel the itch ...

I have the square-rig volume "Rigging Period Ship Models", and can confirm it's excellent for what it does---page after page of clear diagrams showing the typical run of each rope in isolation, based on a study of a specific ship model, the Melampus in the Bristol Industrial Museum. There's no explanatory text---I think each diagram would have profited from a few lines to the effect of "this line's function is [x]"---and nothing about the mechanics of actually modelling these things, but it's a great reference source for the very specific task it sets itself.

Glad you like the photos. I decided I had to do some sort of composite for the lighted photos of my Discovery, because there was a lot of background clutter caused by my efforts to scatter light on to the model without overwhelming its interior lights---hence the starry background in several shots on the RFI thread for that model. But the software worked so well at cutting the model out of the background, I thought Hmmm, this might be worth a try with Space Station V. I was impressed at how well PhotoScissors picked out the girder work, with only a little tidying needed from me. I'm also glad to have inspired you to undertake your own lovely build. It does feel very much like "taking the plunge" to embark on this kit, doesn't it?

I'm glad you enjoyed the WIP. The build was good fun, particularly getting the detachable pod working. I only really had the one set back, which wasn't a great disaster---having to strip the hero pod back to its primer, because I'd managed to get clear red paint all over it while attempting to place a tiny blob on the interior end of the HAL eye. The problem, I think, is that if you do the Discovery "right" (that is, in subtle shades of pale grey, the way we think it should be), it's actually quite boring to look at! No exterior markings or lights, as would be customary in depictions of modern science fiction spacecraft. So if you're not a hard-core fan of the movie, it's just a big dull object of unusual shape. The response to my display-cased model from visitors has so far been largely one of puzzlement, but with one who lurched to a halt and more or less shouted "Oh my god, it's the Discovery!" and came close to having a religious experience when I turned on the lights for him.

Thanks. I used a bit of software called PhotoScissors, which seems to be quite good at differentiating between foreground and background, and which includes a couple of very basic tools to let you patch up any errors once the algorithm has done its stuff. I quite like simple software that does one task, rather than having to wade through the menus of something like Photoshop to find what you want, and then spend an hour learning what all the little sliders and buttons do.

Well, it took me a couple of years, but I eventually got around to producing some composite images as you suggested. I've appended them to my OP in this thread. I finally found some software that suited me, while fiddling around preparing images against a starry background for my recent build of the Discovery spacecraft. So I got a bit more ambitious and went for Space Station V, too.

Thanks. So little about the pod bay makes sense. It's not orientated correctly relative to the thrust axis---all the pods would roll to the back of the bay as soon as they turned the engines on, and none of the access routes and facilities are correctly orientated. Why depressurize that huge volume every time you want to take a pod out? Why are the spacesuits and helmets stored inside what is effectively a large airlock? Why does the non-EVA astronaut suit up on the command deck when an EVA is taking place, but leave his helmet in the pod bay? (Well, we know that one---because the plot requires a suited astronaut to leave in a hurry and leave his helmet behind.) But it's a thing of beauty, and I forgive Kubrick.

This is the big Moebius styrene kit of the Discovery spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've detailed it with the Paragrafix photoetch cockpit and the Green Strawberry resin-and-photoetch pod bay (supplemented with parts from the Paragrafix pod bay), and with some excellent pods from Falconware via Shapeways. I used Aztek Dummy paint masks for some preshaded detailing, and printed some decals to detail the pods. Some small modifications---drilling and chiselling some holes in the Green Strawberry resin parts, so that I could light up parts that wouldn't otherwise be lightable, and completely replacing the Green Strawberry "octagonal tunnel" in the pod bay to make it lightable. I replaced the photoetch vertical supports for the suit rack in the pod bay with some fine brass wire, which I could secure more firmly, and I revised the small dish antennae and the cockpit window frames because the kit parts didn't quite match the appearance in the film. All covered in mind-numbing detail on the WIP thread: Quite a lot of wiring and lighting added---I wanted to reproduce the classic appearance when Bowman first takes a pod out to repair the antenna: Here's an overview of the completed object: The mission patches on the base come from an Etsy vendor called Demogorgon, and are a pretty good match for the patches worn by Bowman and Poole in the film: The final panel shading is quite subtle, which is what I was aiming for, but difficult to photograph. My little automatic camera shows it up best against a neutral grey background: Lighting is powered by two 3V battery packs inside the engine compartment: Two packs because I wanted to light the engines, just for fun and experience, but really didn't want the ship to appear to be under thrust with the pod extended. So I can light them up for a demo, but leave them off when the command sphere is the focus of attention. And the command sphere: The cockpit is difficult to photograph, but perhaps you can make out my little Frank Poole figure, peering out from the left seat: The illuminated pod is removable, so that it's easier to peer into the illuminated interior of the pod bay: Easier to get the whole thing in focus in a pre-assembly photograph, however: The whole thing now sits inside a custom case, created by a UK company called LasAcryl, whom I'd certainly recommend: (Yes, yes, I know. If I'd anticipated that I was going to end up displaying it like this, I'd have run the power supply through the stand into the base!) And finally a couple of composite views I couldn't resist putting together: And a wee homage to the abandoned Discovery in 2010---dumped near Jupiter's moon Io and covered in sulphur from its volcanoes.

Oh, I love the electrics. Gorgeous model, too. Applause.

That's an absolute beauty. Well done indeed!