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New 22" Round 2/MPC Cargo Eagle Transporter


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I'm a bit behind with the posting, so this will be a bigger update. Starting with some more construction stages, here the walkway shelves have been assembled and sanded - these usually require lots of sanding as the joint is a bit ropey, one of the worst aspects of this kit.

 

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The tops of the walkways - they have not been put on yet so that I still have access to do the wiring. Here you can see the extra greeblies I've added which were left over from other parts of the kit that were meant to go on the underside of the passenger pod

 

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Similarly, I've used some left over pices on the sides of the walkway to fill in some empty spaces.

 

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The feet have been glued together and here the filler is drying ready to sand down the gaps and joints

 

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Next, I return to the base. One of the main features of the base will be the nuclear waste silo cap. Using the cone template from before, I cut out a piece of 0.5mm plastic sheet and joinrd it into a cone using boiling water to help soften the plastic. I then scratch built the box to fit on the front from plastic card. Next, I cut several concentric rings out of 2mm thick card for the top of the cone which holes int he centre of each to allow the LED wires to pass through.

 

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Now to start messing about with some paint... first off primer! The feet have been sanded smooth and given a coat of grey Halfords primer since they will be painted black/dark grey

 

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Next the spine, cargo pallet and winch have been primed in white from a Tamiya rattle can

 

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Here you can see the rest of the components primed either in white or black gloss for the pieces that will be painted with Alclad.

 

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Here are two 10ml pots of Ford Diamond White paint, decanted from a Halfords aerosol can. This was from an old can I had left over from last year but when I sprayed it onto a test piece, the gas was bubbling out of the paint and gave the finish a sort of pebble-dash effect. So instead I decanted it and let it stand for a while to let it degass.

 

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Back to the silo cap and here I started adding the vertical strakes to the cone, but sadly didn't do a great job here

 

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So in the end I took them off using a sharp scalpel and a great deal of care! Then started again, doing a much better job of it!

 

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I also added some details to the console. The purple on the LED is masking fluid for the paint that is to come soon. The extra-flexible wire I ordered arrive today and that means I can finish the wiring in the walkways. I needed the wire to be extra flexible as it will need to be able to be pushed back into the walkway when the leg pods get inserted. I had issues with that on the previous build so this time I've invested in some different wire that should help.

 

More on that and further painting, next time...

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There has been a bit of a hiatus in the posting here simply because its got to the painting stage and the primer stages are not very interesting. However the base coat is now on all the major pieces and the "interesting" bits start again.

 

I say interesting but its a pretty tedious process, because this is the stage I call "Not more bloody masking!" Today has been spent applying various sized pieces of masking tape to the cockpit beak and all 4 leg pods in preparation for the light grey panels to be airbrushed on. Here is the beak with the previous Eagle's for comparison:

 

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and here are all 4 leg pods

 

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I'm not sure why I make myself go through this chore when I could just use the colour blocks from the decals I printed out for the last build, but I guess I'm just peculiar that way or have a fetish for yellow masking tape... :o

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This past week has all been about painting, decaling and washing. First off, the masking tape came off the beak and pods after spraying with Tamiya XF-20. Sadly there are quite a few instances of paint creep - can't honestly say I did a great job with the masking. Will need to touch the edges up with a paintbrush 1f641.png:(

 

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The the winch was masked and sprayed with XF 20. This was a little more effective but still needed some touching up.

 

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The shelves have been decaled and weathered. Most of the decals came from the hover bike kit apart from the chequers which were from decals printed for the last Eagle build.

 

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The engines have had 54 decals applied - kit decals and some from the hover bike. Wasn't sure about the red warning stripes at first but they are growing on me

 

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58 decals applied to the spine - printed ones and stripes from some railway lining decals I've picked up over the years. The spine has now been given a dirt wash since this pic was taken.

 

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The two walkways have had a dozen or so decals added to each one and dirtied down with a wash

 

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Next the cargo pallet and the winch have been finally joined together after decals from the kit and hover bike set have been applied. If you look very carefully on the left you'll see the vertical electrical connection at the far side had to be modified as it was too low - only discovered that on testing the fit yet again! Thank god for testing! The LEDs protected by masking fluid still work however 1f642.png:)

 

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This weekend will be about more masking on the beak and pods to add the pale blue panel and then decals...

 

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Been a busy weekend, painting and decaling and repairing shocking mistakes!

 

Firstly, masking and painting done for the beak - I'm VERY pleased with how the black came out. In both my 2 previous attempts this needed various touch ups because of paint creep. This time, it was perfect - bloody impressed with myself :) The 'light grey' turned out to be dark grey because I chose the wrong pot of paint from my shelf... oops, however I think it still looks pretty good.

 

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At the same time, the leg pods have now been painted, ready for the decals and weathering next. This time I was a bit more careful about the masking and had much less paint creep. I think I'll always associate these leg pods with the England cricket (esp the bowlers) team smashing their way through the West Indies batting lineup!

 

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Now that the walkways and the spine are complete, this allows me to join them together and get a measure of their size. It means I can test out the cargo/winch pod and its electrical connections...

 

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When doing this I found another fault in the vertical electrical connections which meant one of the support struts had to have some filing done on it to make enough space to fit

 

It also allowed me to do this test which give me the exact spacing for the support legs. Turns out I had the original spacing wrong as I used by #2 build which has a mistake in that I put the rear walkway lower frame on backwards and so the engine exhausts are in the wrong place on the rear walkway! It meant I had to re-position the support on the right further back

 

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It also meant re-routing the wiring from the junction block I had originally installed which by sheer chance was exactly where the new leg positions were located!

 

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The support legs have now been araldited into the holes I drilled in the base and the lower polystyrene base and the box surrounding it have now been glued to the base with white PVA glue. Once that has dried I'll apply masking tape around the outer wood surround to protect it from the later stages where the lunar surface will be created.

 

Decals added and some stupid accident corrected - while cleaning a brush I let some of the paint thinners drop on to the black area on this side which lifted the paint and then I made it worse by wiping it with a tissue! I was fuming as it looked like I'd gone and ruined the perfect finish I'd achieved before. So I ended up remasking around the anti-glare panel and respraying the black. I then had to use the Diamond White paint I'd decanted previously to touch up the white paint along the front. Then to add insult to injury, the masking tape ripped off half of the Alpha decal! Thankfully there are spares, so in the end the damage done was repairable!

 

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The Nuclear waste canisters have been painted with a very light grey over the off white plastic, some of which has pooled and caused some irregularities which is good as it adds to the 'used' effect.

 

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The silo base has been painted - in the show I think these were a white colour but I've made them light grey as there is enough white in this with the Eagle itself! I used some 1:48 RAF cockpit decals on the dials of the control panel. All thats left is to take the masking off the LED at the top. I've tested it and it still works:)

 

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The next task will be to put the decals on the leg pods. This is likely to take a while are there are a LOT to place!

 

Next task wiNext

Edited by Kallisti
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wow - that's another bible worth's of amazing work there - you've heard of fifty shades of grey - so don't worry about the wrong pot from the shelf - it looks pretty much to ITV's standards to me...

 

this is going to look very unique as a completed diorama - no doubt setting standards and ideas for many others to follow at a later date

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Winch and cargo pallet have been painted, decals added and finally weathered to within an inch of its existence :)

 

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My rationale for the heavy weathering is that its a working bit of machinery in a dirty environment out on the lunar surface...

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Next I'm turning to finishing off the base. This entails creating a lunar surface to hide the white polystyrene  and various gaps around the edges :) Here are the basic materials I'll be using to create the lunar surface

 

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In the background you can see the big bag of claycrete that is used to create the foundation layer and then in the foreground is various pots of ground artists chalk and railway modeller ballast to be used for the gritty surface. Next is the pestel and mortar I use to ground the artists pastel chalk - for large amounts like this its cheaper than modellers pigments, which are basically ground up coloured chalk anyway :)

 

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Ground Black chalk

 

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Ground white with a little black to turn it grey

 

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Railway ballast with some black chalk added and thoroughly shaken turns it darker

 

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The claycrete is white from the package so this just needed some black artist acrylic mixed in to turn it the appropriate shade of grey

 

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And the final result is this:

 

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and for comparison, this is my older UFO Interceptor on its base which was created using the same techniques

 

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In other news, all the various sub-components of the Eagle have been weathered and matt varnished, so the next stage is final assembly of the Eagle and light testing...

 

Getting close!

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So final assembly has begun, with the scariest bit being the connecting of the leg pod LEDs with the walkway connections. The main problem here is that the space inside is limited but the wires must get pushed back inside as the pods get slotted in and I can't control what happens to them, so the best I can do is make sure the joints are string and solid so they'll survive whatever treatment they get while being pushed into place.

 

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and finally, the magnetic hook has been cabled up...

 

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To make sure the electrics all worked, I took this shot last night just before adding the engine bells just to test it all...

 

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Today's job is to add the cotton wool 'exhaust gasses' around the support pillars and to photograph it all properly :)

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So here we are at the end finally, its been a tricky but satisfying journey. Today has been about finishing the vertical supports, masking them behind cotton wool to make them look like jet exhausts. Its always a never wracking task as cotton wool can be unpredictable and I also HATE the texture of the stuff! :)

 

Anyway, here we go...

 

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These aren't the best quality photos I've ever taken - I did it out in the conservatory and got the angles wrong so the sun reflected off the lens and flared a bit (just call me JJ!) So I left it until this evening and it all went dark...

 

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The last photo shows it in pride of place on the 'Wall of Models' :)

 

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Finally - well until I re-photograph it properly, here is a little video showing the lighting effects :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Very nice indeed and well up to your usual standard.

Something I just noticed, Eagles are anonymous.

They didn't carry fleet numbers as on other shows. 

Now I suppose that was deliberate so that they could

re-use bits of film and so save money.

What's next? Not that you need a rest or anything!

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I'm looking at whats in the stash - I feel like doing something different and relatively simple... The Academy F-15E Strike Eagle has been sitting on the shelf since I got it half price from Modelzone many many moons ago... Wonder what it'd look like in RAF camo and markings?

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Wahou !!!! very impressive build :worthy:

 

I think a 22 inches eagle without lights is like a Christmas without Christmas tree :D

 

Congratulations Kallisti  ;)

 

Pierre

 

 

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Really well done, love it, i had the die cast cargo transporter eagle  along with just about every gerry Anderson model many moons past when i were lad, brings back some happy memories, what next? 

Glynn

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  • 1 month later...

@Kallisti that is bloody fantastic!

I registered to this forum because I've just taken delivery of the MPC 1:48 scale Eagle and I hope you can help me with some advice.  

I watched Space 1999 as a kid when it originally aired and it remains my favourite space ship despite several Star Wars ships coming close (I met Brian Johnson at a Comicon at the NEC not long ago).

So I want to do a good job of building this.  It's been 35 years since I built a model kit.  I used to build them regularly as a kid with the Airfix Angel Interceptor being my first ever model and the Airfix Spitfire being my favourite.  I actually made a balsa portion of the Moonbase around an Eagle which I filled with fireworks and blew up.  Still have the Super 8 reel.

 

Your threads on the 22" Eagle builds will be invaluable to me, thank you.

I wanted to ask you, please, if you could list the paints and the best sources for them?  The box just reads white, cream, black, aluminium and light tan etc.  Are there any 'reference' colours?

Maybe suggestions for glue, scalpel and other tools?  I have none so far.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

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Hi Spinball

 

Glad to hear you are rejoining the modelling fraternity and that I have helped to inspire you :)

 

As for paints, unlike 'real' vehicles which can have accurate colours attributed to them, we are talking about TV models which don't, coupled to the fact that the very bright studio lights changed the colours that you see. However, a lot of research has been done by others over the years and the conclusion is that the most 'accurate' white to use on this is Ford DIamond White from Halfords. It comes in an aerosol can and its what I've used on all 3 of my Eagles. For primer you can also use Halfords grey or white primer. The advantage of Grey primer is that it makes it easier to faults and also where you have and haven't sprayed the paint when it comes to the white overcoat :)

 

Now as for other paints for the smaller pieces, it depends how far into the modelling hobby you want to get. I use Tamiya acrylics usually but these don't brush paint eveyr well but are superb in the airbrush. If you want an easier time brush painting, and you don't want to hunt around for a model shop or online, I'd suggest trying Ravell Aqua colours which are water-based acrylics and are available in Hobbycraft which is pretty much everywhere in the UK.

 

For the metallic engine belles I used specialist paints called Alclad but I would not recommend those to a beginner, they require an airbrush and are very tricky to get right. If you are very wealthy, you can invest in the aluminium engine bells (which cost more than the kit!) or simply make do with a good silver/steel colour from the Revell range.

 

For the major black areas, Round2 provide decals for the side pod thruster panels and for the beak window inserts. These do a good job so you don't need to paint these areas if you don't want to. I usually paint the beak window insets but thats because I like to get a nice matt finish, however I do use the decals for the side thrusters and the underside of the leg pods.

 

My other advice is to take your time and study the instructions carefully, particualrly when it comes to the engine assembly as it can be tricky getting the support rods in the right place. The other tricky bit is building the spine but I think I wrote up my method for doing this in this thread. 

 

My final bit of advice is if you are on Facebook, there is a group called Space:1999 Props and Ships which is dedicated to building these models and is a valuable resource from more experienced modellers and returning modellers like yourself.

 

Final finally :) If you are not busy on the weekend of the 11/12 November, get yourself over to the Telford International Exhibition Centre for the IPMS UK Annual model show, Scale Model World where you'll see AT LEAST two of these models on display (mine :) ) and almost certainly a lot more. You'll also be abel to pick up any number of paints (except Halfords!) and any other modelling tools you care to imagine.

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