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Here's my Monogram "First Lunar Landing" build. I'm doing it for my dad for Fathers' Day, so the B-36 I'm also doing for this GB is on the back burner until I get this done!

It's the 1994 "25th Anniversary" re-release of the original, but I think the only thing Monogram changed was that the shadows on the lunar surface which serves as a diorama base have to be painted.

lunar.jpg

lunar2.jpg

lunar3.jpg

lunar4.jpg

The foil that comes with the kit has some very (very, very) light adhesive which doesn't stick without help from some Microscale Bare Metal Foil Adhesive. The uneven surface of the thermal blankets that covered the lander is simulated by crumpling the foil before attaching it.

:rolleyes:

Mike

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Mike,

that is coming along nicely. I did not realise the kit came with the foil.

How long had you spent on it up to these pictures?

I sure was happy to see the foil in there! :)

The foil actually isn't too hard; the back of it is marked so you can cut each shape precisely prior to attaching it to the model. The time-consuming part is getting it to stick properly and waiting for the adhesive to dry. I finished this portion in two weeks, working an hour a night or so.

:cheers:

Mike

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Having serious flashbacks here, I built that kit when it first came out "back in the day"....*

* note "back in the day" has now officially replaced "24/7" as the most hated trendy catchphrase of this decade. :cheers:

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OooH! A big one - and with lots of the right bumps and bits (compared with the Airfix one I did a few years ago).

Looking good so far. Does the kit come with a base, or are you making you own.

cheers

Grant

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Thanks for the positive comments, guys! I'm really having fun with this one. Quite a bit different from the normal routine (cockpit, fuselage, wings, paint, decals, fiddly bits, done).

Does the kit come with a base, or are you making you own.

The kit comes with a fairly large base molded as the lunar surface with craters, footprints, and slight depressions indicating where the shadows are. I'll post a pic tonight. To complete the diorama, the kit includes two astronauts, the American flag, and the several experiments and cameras that Armstrong and Aldrin set up.

:)

Mike

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That's a sweet looking job you're doing on that one so far. The only reason I'm not doing a real space kit in this GB is I want to dress mine up. But that kit is very good out of the box....and I remember building it when I was a teenager, and struggling with the foil.

Justin

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For Grant, here's a pic of the portion of the lander on the base. Obviously, the base has yet to be painted and is still in the original plastic color. You can barely make out the footprints and shadow areas.

lunar5.jpg

:beer4:

Mike

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Excellent progress thus far. Of all real space model kits done in styrene, the Monogram LM is one of those rare few that can be built into an excellent looking and mostly accurate replica out of the box. Revell was quick to get their stuff to market, but Monogram was willing to wait in order to offer a more accurate kit. In the case of the LM and the 1/32 CSM, their waiting helped us modelers immensely.

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Very nice looking build - of a kit I never knew existed.

I built the Airfix example a few years ago, with gold kitkat wrapper foil on the landing section - didn't get quite the same wrinkled effect as the one at NASM.

I printed the Mr Gorsky story and stuck it under the base - which cause HUGE amusement when I showed the model to colleagues at work.

Here is a link http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blgorsky.htm - open it at your peril.

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Again, thanks for the positive comments guys. I've assembled the ascent stage and put a base coat of silver on it. More pics later over the weekend.

Very nice looking build - of a kit I never knew existed.

I didn't know it existed either, until an article on Cybermodeler on the 1/32 CSM (which I didn't know about either) sent me looking for a CSM. Along the way, I found this kit on E-bay for less than $30 even including shipping.

I printed the Mr Gorsky story and stuck it under the base - which cause HUGE amusement when I showed the model to colleagues at work.

:rofl:

:)

Mike

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Here's some more progress, this time on the ascent stage. The rest of the kit is nearly done too. On the ascent stage I learned the hard lesson of acrylics: MM Acryl over Tamiya does NOT work. :angry: In the end, I had to repaint the black areas with enamel.

lunar6.jpg

:)

Mike

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That is just too cool!

Thanks! Although I had some frustration with the foil (and a self-inflicted problem with paint), I really enjoyed the kit. The diorama element of it was fun.

:pray:

Mike

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In some ways, it reminds me of the Hasegawa Egg Plane series - I had the SR-71, which came with a half-globe base and a little Russian fella staring up at the sky as the SR-71 flew over. My younger brother had the Space Shuttle, which also came with the half-globe base, and an astronaut doing a space walk. They were both fun builds.

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Oh, I see what you mean about the 'shadow areas' on the base. That works quite well.

It's a shame, in the bigger scale, that the kit is a little more detailed, but you have made a good job of it.

That will look real cool in the display case.

cheers

Grant

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Thanks guys!

Having the shadow areas on the base marked off made it a lot easier to paint. I still had to do the shadows for the rocks and crater rims by hand though (I held the base up to a lightbulb to get a sense where the shadows would fall).

I'm not familiar with the smaller Airfix kit, so I don't know how this one stacks up to it. But, I didn't see any glaring omissions when looking at pics of the real thing, so I think the model is pretty good OOB.

:boohoo:

Mike

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