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1/144 Space Shuttle Discovery


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I've seen a lot of shuttle models in my time (and built a few myself). This is one of the nicer efforts I've seen from the Revell stack. Good call going with the Minicraft OMS pods as they do indeed have a more accurate shape than the boxy Revell pods.

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Thanks for the kind words. The effort was good enough to win First Place in the Factual Spacecraft category at IPMS Baltimore's MarauderCon 2010. It was an easy win as it was the only real space entry!

In retrospect, I should have reworked the intertank area on the ET. I first assumed the ribbing was correct, but now know that it is not. I would have also used a lighter grey for the ET plumbing and a darker grey for the nose cap. ET was painted with terracotta arts & craft acrylic with the intertank section painted PollyS Milwaulkee Rd. Orange railroad colors.

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Ceramcoat Terracotta was the main ET color. It's very thick out of the squeeze bottle. It was very difficult to thin out for airbrushing. I hand brushed the ET and was surprised how easy it smoothed out. It took just a little sanding with 1000 grit sanding film to take down the brush strokes. The entire model (with the exception of the flight deck windows) is coated with a Krylon matte finish spray.

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Thanks gang.

The fuselage side insulation is a decal that I made from NASA's Shuttle Operational Database. At one time NASA had on their website some very nice PDF diagrams that indicated tile placement on the orbiters. What was neat about them was that they became scalable vector based art if imported into Corel Draw. So I scaled them down to 1/144, manipulated them a little to fit the Revell fuselage, thinned the lines out, editied out the lettering, and made them a light grey. The image was then printed onto 8x10 clear decal stock.

The tail was done in the same fashion.

The nose tiles, OMS pods tiling, fuselage hatch, and stargazer port were from the M.A.R.S. paper shuttle model in 1/100th scale. Once again the PDF artwork was imported into Corel Draw and edited to fit. This was printed on decal sheet. The tiles just aft of the RCC on the wing's leading edge were done the same way.

I think I went through a 55 gallon drum of Walther's Solvaset to get the decals to snuggle down but they went down with nary a wrinkle. This was the first time making my own decals. The remainder of the markings were commercially available aftermarket. Detail close ups to follow.

PS...I went looking for the tile diagrams in the NASA SODb website and they are no longer there. I have the artwork for Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis but didn't download the PDF's for Columbia and Challenger. If anyone has those I'd love a copy of them.

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Gene,

Your work is amazing!! Would you mind sharing your PDF/EPS files? I went looking for the SODb too and could not find it. I would love to see some close up shots of your build. Below is a link to my shuttle galleries. I was able to get several up close tours during the final missions.

http://troymcclellanphotos.smugmug.com/SpaceShuttle

Thanks,

Troy

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