Daeothar (finally) goes Lunar - Sidestepping to some astronauts

[zemjw]

It's an easy to build one, which is perfect for wargaming purposes, as this usually means it's sturdier. But also, to my big surprise, there's actual 'gold' foil for the golden parts!    The decals are a bit yellowed, but that'll be fine.

The wrinkles in the gold bit are moulded on the new(ish) kit. Does yours have that, or are you expected to create the texture with the gold leaf (in which case, rather you than me )

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

I've been wanting to get my hands on this game for quite some time now. Ever since I read Alan Smale's excellent 'Hot Moon - Apollo Rising, book 1'.

Downloaded this onto my Kindle and thoroughly enjoying it. So much so, that I've pre-ordered book 2. It looks like it could very nicely, form the background to many scenarios.

Thanks for the tip off.   

[Daeothar]

Glad you like it 

The writer actually works at NASA and really knows his stuff; scifi doesn't get harder than this.

Can't wait for book 2 to drop this November!

[beefcake]

Cool. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

[Daeothar]

And we have lift off!

An accurate kit this is not, but it's sturdy, it's simple and it's from the actual era, so I'm not complaining.

I caught myself checking the internet for pictures of the LEM docking hatch, after finding it's just a circular indentation on the model; I'm going to keep it simple without a lot of reference checking, or I'll find myself rebuilding probably the entire thing from poystyrene and 'ain't nobody got time for that!'

So for speed's sake, I'm going to do this (almost ) straight and by the book. Although I'm still on the fence about possibly recreating the landing struts in metal because I'm not confindent about the loadbearing capacity of the plastic ones in the kit, especially in the long run.

We'll see.

For now, I've simply blacked out the interior, did not place the one astronaut in there and glued in the provided acetate sheet, cut to shape and size for the two windows and glued the two halves of the ascend stage together.

Also, I've glued the descend portion together, plus two thruster housings. Those will require a lot of filing and sanding. Speaking of which; the large sections do require this too, including some filling, but that's easy. By the way; the bottom half actually does not, because it'll be covered in foil.

The instructions say that the foil should be glued down with 'cement', but I'm fairly certain that polystyrene cement will not intereact (favourably) with foil like this. Any idea what type of glue would be best?

[carlos marighela]

Superglue for foil of any description.

That's an amazing bit of kit you have there. I've used 1/48 figures with 28mm. depending on any taper in the leg it's usually possible to remove a millimeter or two from their legs using a balde and then glue back together. Most 28mm figures would be stumpy buggers in real life.

I've always thought the LUAZ airborne jeeps look suitably space age. How about a semi-fictional electric version for the cosmonauts ride?

https://www.empressminiatures.com/luaz-967-airborne--vehicle-3104-p.asp

[Cat]

Super glue or E6000 should do the trick.
 
Hmm, the LUAZ does look the part, maybe puttying up the inner side of the tyres for a more balloony look.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Hmm, the LUAZ does look the part, maybe puttying up the inner side of the tyres for a more balloony look.

More "historical" would be the open format.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2

Though how you model that leave as an exercise for the reader.

[Daeothar]

A small step for man, and also for mankind.

This is still the boring stuff; sanding, filling, sanding and filling again, until the result is as smooth as James Webb's mirror.

I also cleaned up a lot of the remaining smaller bits, but I'll do the legs in one go once I get to them; a lot of those needs to be covered in foil, so I won't be sanding myself crosseyed on them when I don't have to

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Coming along nicely. I think I may need one of those! 

[Daeothar]

Look what the C.A.T. dragged in! 

I'll do a proper size comparisson between the Revell and Black Site astronauts, this evening, but a preliminary side by side already reveals quite a difference...

[Daeothar]

Quite a height difference, but as I stated earlier; when properly based, the difference is largely gone. So I'm considering the lander's scale to be a pretty good match after all 

The only progress this evening is a layer of primer on the ascend stage. It's still drying in the garage, so no pics yet, but there's probably going to be another round of filling and sanding before I'm satisfied...

[Daeothar]

So, as I expected, I just couldn't leave well enough alone, now could I?

Building a period model kit is one thing, but accuracy has nothing to do with it and I had been fully prepared to overlook certain inaccuracies, as they can be expected from a 55 year old kit. But when I started looking up reference pictures for the paintjob, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole.

All the way down...

There were so many glaring errors I just could not look away anymore. I'm not going for a display quality replica here; it remains first and foremost a gaming piece, but some things just had to be addressed.

Such as the structural strut to the right of the door on the ascend module; in the kit this was represented by a completely filled in shelf. So I cut it off, and replaced it with a piece of plastic rod. BUt I then also had to rebuild part of the hull, as the removal of the cast triangle left large holes.

Similarly; there was no window on the top right of the hull, so I cut this and added some acetate 'glass'. 3 of the 5 antennas are missing from the kit, so I'll be scratchbuilding those myself too.

And then there was the egress door itself, which was this very weird looking lump inside the door cavity. So I cut this out and replaced it with a more accurate version made with plasticard.

The back was just one plain square, while the original appears to be a number of panels, almost crudely welded together. So I added plasticard panels to it, after sanding and scraping all of the primer away first...

All of the above would not have been a chore at all, had I started on these flaws before assembly. But as I had foolheardedly assembled, filled, sanded and primed the larger hull pieces under the misguided assumption that I would be able to accept the innacuracies, I had to do this with a basically paint ready model

Also, I found out that the hull was not white as I had somehow always believed it to be, but an amalgam of grey/green, black, aluminium and copper panels. And the descend stage is not completely covered in gold foil at all. Firstly, it's more of a copper, and it's interspersed with loads of black and aluminium panels as well.

So now I'm looking for copper foil too, so if anyone knows where I can get my hands on some?

Finally, it appears that the kit designers had either no clue about the plume deflectors, or they simply didn't want to bother with them. I certainly didn't even know about them, but they're a visible part of the original descend module. And since the two modules can be connected and separated in the kit through two locking pins (to be replaced by magnets of course; welcome to the 21st century, boomers), they absolutely need to be there when the descend module is alone on the table. So now I'll have to scratchbuild them. Easy enough, but time consuming.

I'm using this guy's building blog of a scratchbuilt 1:24 scale model, which is glorious, and it's become my ultimate guide for this build of mine. Until my Haynes Apollo Owner's Manual arrives, that is...   

[Mad Lord Snapcase]

Wow! This is going to be good, tremendous eye for detail! 

[Cat]

Oh no he says, paper is as much work as styrene he says...
 
Enjoy the modelling rabbit hole, I've fallen into those too at times!