Gargarin spacesuit questions

[Michael Morris]

I'm starting a 1/12 scale figurine of Yuri Gargarin in his spacesuit. Does anyone know what base orange colour would be best spacesuit?  Also does anyone know of a source of a 'CCCP' decal for the helmet.

Thanks 

[kiseca]

Maybe not helpful for reduced scale, and apologies if you already know this...

 

The CCCP on Gagarin's helmet was painted on by hand on the morning he launched. It was painted by the person nearby who happened to have the steadiest hand. The paint was likely still wet while he was travelling on the bus, fully suited, to the rocket.

 

Reason: Tensions were high at the time in the general public not least because of Gary Powers getting shot down while flying over Soviet territory. The Soviets did a practice flight with a fully suited dummy shortly before Gagarin's flight. The dummy was called Ivan Ivanovich. When it landed by parachute after being ejected from the capsule (just like Gagarin would be), the dummy was found by local residents who, thinking he might be another US spy and not realising at first that Ivan was a dummy, beat it up.

 

On the morning of Yuri's launch, when he was fully suited, someone realised how similar he looked to Gary Powers because of the orange spacesuit, thought back to Ivan's unfortunate encounter with local Russians, and ordered CCCP to be painted on the helmet as the best solution he could come up with and apply in the short time available.

 

Thus, if you have a very steady hand, then hand painting it on would be historically accurate (but probably won't look it!)

 

Source: the book "Beyond" by Stephen Walker. Well recommended read if you have not done so already. It has some photos which may or may not help with the choice of orange too, but my guess is if you can match the US orange suits of the time you'd be pretty close.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by kiseca

[Peter2]

Maybe try rubbing down some Letraset and once applied slightly thicken (say, with a fine-tip marker) the 4 letters where appropriate, to give a Cyrillic look.

[Angus Tura]

I'd go to MS Word, type it out in cyrillic (in the symbol menu). Change the font colour to red and the size to what you want. Print on blank decal paper and youre done.

 

I'd just use humbrol 46 for your orange base. Not very bright but that's probably good.

 

Alan

[frapes75]

On 5/23/2023 at 11:54 PM, Michael Morris said:

I'm starting a 1/12 scale figurine of Yuri Gargarin in his spacesuit. Does anyone know what base orange colour would be best spacesuit?  Also does anyone know of a source of a 'CCCP' decal for the helmet.

Thanks 

You can try maybe Revell luminous orange matt 25 . I think it would look cool because it is a very saturated nearly fluorescent color! Revell colors tend to be more saturated than usual model colors. I don't know if matt25 is  exactly accurate though. I would stay away from vallejo as I think their colors are duller and not near as much saturated for 1/12 scale. At least the model color/ air range that I know off

 

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by frapes75

[JWM]

In old VEB Plasticart (1/25 scale) it looked like that:

/photo from web page: https://www.ebay.com/itm/255848547617 /