Moebius Aries 1B from 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Kallisti]

Having just built the Moebius Space Clipper from 2001, it was perfect timing for the postman to deliver this wonderful kit just as the paint was drying:

 

 

 

 

It looks like a superb kit and from my experience of building it so far, it is! Its not an easy thing to build, there are some quire complex assembly steps and of course it cries out for lighting so I have been building a lighting solution!

 

First off there are the engines and landing leg assembly - the landing legs can be displayed deployed or folded and the mechanism is a thing of beauty! The engine detail is excellent

 

 

In theory the engines can be lit, but I don't want to do that as a) it won't be seen and b) its not screen accurate. I was able to find a superb set of videos of the Aries sequence from the movie and the engine bells are matt black and not illuminated

 

 

 

Next, the legs are assembled and the lower hull added

 

 

 

The the covers go over the leg openings and the legs got folded for this pose

 

 

I love the folding mechanism, its really effective! Added some primer and realised the joins between the hull panels are a bit poor so been doing some filling and sanding there, not helped by having added the leg covers

 

 

Speaking of filler, the passenger compartment floor comes as two cenmi-circular pieces but the joint needs work!

 

 

Second round of filling and sanding after primer and also adding the lower internal hull ring

 

 

The passenger compartment ceiling does not need quite the same about of work to hide the joint. Next to it are the two 'Zero-G toilet compartments and the central lift.

 

 

I'll be building a lighting box on the back side of the ceiling to illuminate the inner and outer ring. In the movie, the middle ring of lights seem to be off

 

 

So thinking about the lighting, the first thing to consider is where does the power come from? You usually either have 2 choices - from a base or hide the batteries inside the model. I've chosen the latter option as there seems to be a lot of empty space inside the upper hull hemisphere. First task then is to create an access panel

 

 

I've added a non-screeen accurate 'vane' that can be used as a handle...

 

 

With small magnets to hold it in place

 

 

 

Inside the upper hull the main feature is a cockpit box that seemed the obvious place to attach the batter to so a support was scratch built

 

 

 

and with the battery inserted...

 

 

So now we have power lets start adding lighitng. The cockpit is the first place to focus, In the movie the cockpit is illuminated in red

 

 

The kit parts have recessed areas for the lights and these protrude on the backside of the kit part which means you can sand that down to get a paper-thin plastic film over the light which is perfect to diffuse the light from an LED mounted behind it. You can see the light panels as the darker areas here where I've built up a lightbox over them to hold the LEDs and contain the light

 

 

I've used gaffer tape to wrap the box to make sure it is opaque to the light from inside

 

 

The outside of the roof part is painted black to mask the lights and a test was made:

 

 

 

The outside of the cockpit box is a bit of a mess now  

 

 

Thats as far as I've got so far. Last night I assembled all the seats for the passenger compartment and they got primed this morning. They all need painted a mustard yellow colour, I'll probably use Tamiya XF-60

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

That looks like a great kit. Love the folding legs. The lighting looks just right, well done.

It looks like a fair size too. I'm off to visit the zero gravity gents. Wish me luck!

[Kallisti]

 

[Bejay53]

Now just waiting for this in 1/72!
We got the Discovery in 1/144!

[Jeddahbill]

This looks like a fantastic build so far.   Like the idea for the removable battery panel - good job on that.  Will you include figures?

Cheers,

Bill

[Kallisti]

I'd like to but the 3D printed figures I've seen so far are a) poor quality IMO b) expensive c) scheduled to arrive in mid-October

 

I'm sure I've seen somewhere some 'flats' for the crew, including seated passengers but can't for the life of me find it again!

[Kallisti]

Lots of work done in the last week, first off the passenger cabin ceiling lighting has been sorted. This involved building boxes around the lights I intennd to illuminate and then fixing the LEDs and wiring them

 

 

The passenger compartment got painted up  - you can see the Zero G toilet door on the left which has the instruction decal in place.

 

 

The ceiling too has been painted

 

 

The upper dome has been primed and some black paint applied as pre-shading.

 

 

I've done some paint mixing as well to get a nice 'off-white' which is Tamiya XF-2 with a couple of drops of grey in it. Its just taken the edge of the whiteness. 

 

In the inside of the passenger lounge there are several wall-mounnted TVs,

 

 

these are reproduced in the kit:

 

 

The one on the left is switched off, so I've painted the screen X-10 semi gloss black while the other three I decided should be showing movies... but what should they show...

 

 

So these are from the left - Luke swinging Leila across the chasm in Star Wars, Gandalf and the Balrog in Moria in Fellowship of the Ring (released in 2001), Wheel in space from 2001 (yes the movie is showing inside the movie), then its the switch off TV. I have no idea if these will be visible inside the passenger compartment, but frankly who cares, I know they are there

So the passenger compartment is basically finished apart from the windows in the gaps around the outside

 

 

There has been some other work done that I didn't photograph yet, more of that next time...

 

 

 

 

[Jeddahbill]

Looking very good!  Passenger cabin TV's are nicely done!

 

Bill

[Kallisti]

Another good day's progress today.. .we have ceiling lights!!!

 

 

Sorry about the lens flare, my phone seems to think its owned by JJ Abrams! This is with the work table light switched on

 

 

I 'frosted' the transparencies by painting the rear sides with windsor and newton matt varnish. The other side is a bit of a mess but of course won't be seen

 

 

As I mentioned before, I've left the middle row of light blank as that is what you see in the movie (see screenshot in the first post). In other news the window frames of the windows in the passenger compartment have been panted black. I masked them and then brush painted the black

 

 

I've also started painting the upper 'globe' white over the grey primer and black pre-shading

 

 

 

There have also been a few other tweaks to the build, including preparing the thruster nozzles for painting - all 32 of them!

[Pete in Lincs]

Great progress and detailing. I like the TV pictures idea. 

[Roberto]

Great project, and solid progress 👍

[whitestar12chris]

Absolutely stunning build, love it, the lighting is just out of this world. hope to see the finished model at Telford.

 

All the best Chris

[Kallisti]

Lots of progress this week, first off attaching the passenger compartment floor to the lower globe...

 

 

As you can see this needed a LOT of clamping to get the outer lip to conform to the globe. This needed careful gluing, clamping a bit more glue and some more clamps over a couple of days. Then I had to sand back the joint as there were glue splurges and a slight overlap in a couple of places. After than it was then a matter of repainitng. I sadly forgot to take pics as I had to mask all the windows and the inside of the passenger compartment.  The painting took many days to complete as it was a bit of a nightmare, with runs, orange-peel effects and all manner of nastiness that needed multiple sandings, painting sandings again and more painting. At one point I though I'd made a total disaster of it!!!

 

By contrast, attaching the passenger compartment ceiling was a lot easier, although I was forced to trim down some of the LED light boxes I'd built inside as they kept interfering with each other. Then I discovered that the battery support bracket interfered with the plate over the central hole which supported the central LEDs, so the battery bracket had to be completely rebuilt so it was higher up the back of the cockpit. I built it so it will support one of the battery packs on its side instead of standing up as it had been made originally. Eventually everything fitted together, although it was a tight fit!

 

 

This also needed some sanding around the edge as you can see there were some raised joints between the side walls that needed smoothing. I've also applied all the decals on the central column. Of course now we need a lighting test...

 

 

This made me think of Close Encounters... or maybe an ELO concert 

Cockpit lighting is go as well

 

 

In other news, the thruster deflection panels have been fully painted and weathered with some black smoke pignment

 

 

The next stage is to join the two halves together and I think this may be a tricky job as a test fit showed a lot of gapping  This side looks okay at first but look at the first wall piece on the right...

 

 

and it gets worse further around...

 

 

I have a bad feeling about this!!! More later... by the way this pic also shows some of the paint problems I had with repainting after the sanding of the joint. Bad news all round

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

4 hours ago, Kallisti said:

This made me think of Close Encounters... or maybe an ELO concert

I'll second that. Shame about the gaps.

If the wall pieces are all the same size, then is something stopping the top from sitting down properly? Or is the top warped?

[Bejay53]

Since I didn’t see it mentioned yet…have you checked out the YouTube channel for Lou Dalmaso and his build?

Also, there is another channel for Ken Spriggs and his build. 
They are both worth checking out.

[Uncle Monty]

I see what you mean about the paint. Wet and dry paper? A little sanding should help. Getting the top to sit properly could be an interesting challenge. This happened to me (not with this kit) and the first step was to identify what was stopping it from sitting squarely. Took a lot of careful cutting to fix.

[Neil Lambess]

Would strong double sided tape help ? That way you could still remove the top dome and hopefully close the gaps ?

[Kallisti]

After a great deal of plastic fettling, it finally closed up enough. The biggest issue I faced was trying to identify WHAT was blocking the upper layer from settling properly. This resulted in all manner of platic chippeing being carried out in multiple areas - for example on the left here where the ceiling opening for the Zero-G toilet has been enlarged and in the centre where the hole for the central column has been opened further and the outer rim has been sanded further:

 

 

and similarly here where the central column has been slimmed down and the Zero Go toilet on the far side has had its upper parts trimmed down.

 

 

In the end what it appeared to be was the inside section of the wall pieces were blocking the ceiling. It seems that some of them were at a slight angle rather than being totally flat horizontal, so these had to be sanded and some refitted so that the gap was small enough that it would settle down properly and allow it all to be glued.

 

 

The final stages of assembly were the 4 blocks of thrusters with their baffle plates and then a final going over with washes and pigments to give it a well used, workhouse machine type of finish

 

 

 

The interior lighting is subtle in normal light

 

 

but does stand out when the ambient light drops

 

 

 

 

I'll take some better completed pics within the next few days and post them in the RFI section.

 

This was a fun but challenging build of an expensive kit but I loved it. The model will be on display in public for the first time tomorrow at the REME Museum model show in Lyneham and WILL be at Telford on the Farnborough table - it won't be in the competition, there are too many faults with the build

[Alan R]

Can't help hearing "Blue Danube" whilst reading this....

 

 

Cheers,

Alan.

[Kallisti]

1 hour ago, Alan R said:

Can't help hearing "Blue Danube" whilst reading this....

 

 

Cheers,

Alan.

 

Try this playlist in Youtube, it captures the entire Blue Danube sequences: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIZ9xuojCeEHvNLXh7kVRE6TqRdLQksn5

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Kallisti

[Kallisti]

As promised, I've taken some better finished pics and made an RFI thread here: