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1:72 scale Atlantis Shuttle


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Hi Vince,

what you're building here is modelling madness, excellent and outstanding work on this build. B) That all looks great and very accurate. I admire your brilliant talent and your perseverance and I'm simply only enthusiastic. :clap2: I think your build will become an artwork, keep up your great work in such a way.

Amazing!!!! :jaw-dropping: Congratulation!!!!

:wave:

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The tilt table gets a little more work. With the addition of the copper mylar, the instrument boxes are glued on and holes for the various wires are drilled out. I could not replicate the number of wires connecting each box, so I made a general assessment and "made it look good". The wires were made from waxed thread and were taped together to form a bundle that runs around the front of the tilt table, feeding the various boxes along the way. The wires were glued to the bunch then trimmed to size, and the whole mess was tightly wrapped with a long strip of copper mylar. Afterward, the whole thing was given a coat of clear lacquer and a light grey was applied to the wires and edges of the instrument boxes. I had to go back and re-wrap part of the cable (you can see a loose piece in the last photo) but overall, I'm satisfied with the progress.

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Ok, the tilt table is about 90 percent complete with the addition of the mechanism that rotates the assembly and completion of the trunion pin arms. The actuators were just plastic rod and tube wrapped in copper mylar. The rotating parts are half circles with lightening holes drilled and a few extra details added. Nothing special, but it accurately replicates the devices on the tilt table. There are various boxes installed on the electrical raceway that will have wires running up to the rotating actuator and a couple of other receptacles, but that will be put in much later.

The assembly is not glued in place yet, I dry fitted the parts to be sure everything will work. Once the shuttle exterior is complete, the tilt table will be permanently installed, the wires run from the raceway to the various parts, and Gallileo put in his place.

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Hi Vince.

This is a real work of art, and it is obvious that you did some serious investigation before arming the exactor-knife...

The build is great, and i'm about to build a Shuttle stack myself now...

I can only dream about your eye for details.

Might pick them up as yo.. ehhhhm, i go on with my own business. ;)

Cheers

Rene'

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Thanks for your compliments Rene'

The key I find is to really look and examine photos for details that are specific to the area that you are interested in. Even two pictures of the same subject can reveal details that cannot be discerned from just a single photo.

I'm just trying to replicate basic shapes and make the mechanisms believable... its not impossible to recreate every detail, but you've got to draw the line somewhere! I see all of the work the other folks on this board put into their models, and it gives me inspiration for my own work.

Keep us up to date with your shuttle build, we would all love to watch your progress!

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Beautiful project! The scratch building components are incredible!

As a point of modelers choice, I would have used varying shades of gray washes for the bay instead of just one dark one. Some areas would have a more subtle shading than others. That would have made the bay really pop to the eye. Just my 2 cents worth.

Can't wait to see her done.

Tracy

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Vince,

The tilt table is a work of art! :thumbsup:

I know what you mean about examining photos of specific areas. It seems that when I feel I've got an area nailed down I find something different in another picture. I must have about 3500 pictures I've collected of various shuttle missions and I've looked at them many times and still find more details every time I open one up.

Mike.

Edited by crowe-t
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That I can fully agree, only with good detail photos one comes further step by step to success in scratch-building.

:wave:

I have only 410 High Resolution pictures to the project of my OV-102, but the data-base are growing, more comming to every day.

By the way Manfred, have you checked this link out. http://www.apollosaturn.com/ml.htm

I know it's about the Saturn V era, but the Mobile Launch ML in Saturn terms, and MLP in Shuttle terms, the Mobile Launch Pad is basically the same.

There's some drawings of the inside of it too.

Just stumbled upon it yesterday.

Edited by x3mperformance
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Beautiful project! The scratch building components are incredible!

As a point of modelers choice, I would have used varying shades of gray washes for the bay instead of just one dark one. Some areas would have a more subtle shading than others. That would have made the bay really pop to the eye. Just my 2 cents worth.

You're exactly right, and that was an error I made early on, but I'm just going to live with it.

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I have only 410 High Resolution pictures to the project of my OV-102, but the data-base are growing, more comming to every day.

By the way Manfred, have you checked this link out. http://www.apollosaturn.com/ml.htm

I know it's about the Saturn V era, but the Mobile Launch ML in Saturn terms, and MLP in Shuttle terms, the Mobile Launch Pad is basically the same.

There's some drawings of the inside of it too.

Just stumbled upon it yesterday.

Hi Rene',

thanks for your comments and for the link. Sorry, I would not like to disturb Vince's great thread, :rolleyes: and it's surely better, if you write me in my LC-39A-STS-6 thread. Therefore only briefly so much: I have checked this link and I know ML drawings from the LUT plans too.

But I did not find e.g. diameters of the LOX/LH2 pipes there, which I can use for scratch-building my Shuttle MLP. The outside form of the ML's and MLP's nearly is alike, but the fuel pipe systems between ML and MLP differ totally. Do you have possibly outside diameters of the MLP pipes or High-Res. photos for me, from which I could measure them?

:wave:

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The next step in filling out the cargo bay is the SSBUV experiment canisters, which is acronym for Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Experiment. The instruments were carried in two "get away special" canisters on the starboard side.

The canisters started out as (approximately) 1/2" diameter plastic tube, with one end filled with epoxy putty. The lid of the experiment is a disk of .020 plastic with "C" channel plastic for the actuator box on the back. The second canister has a ring of bolts around the top which were replicated by tiny cuttings of plastic rod glued in place, then sanded down to the same height.

The canisters are attached to a different type of bridge structure, but shaped exactly like the type that hold the heavy cargo in place. This bridge does not have the motorized capture device for bridge pins.

The whole mess is painted white, sealed with gloss lacquer, and given a light grey wash to bring out the shadows.

The emblems on the front are reduced prints of the logos found on the flight experiment canisters glued on with white glue.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Ahh, yeah. Sorry about that :D I had started on the bottom decals and they took a long time to produce, then I ended up printing out the wrong version and got frustrated with the whole thing. The model is still sitting on my desk staring at me and I came >this< close to getting back to the decals today. I promise more activity within the next couple of months, sometimes you just have to take a break

Ok, it been a while since I received a notice from this WIP. What's the big idea? I liked having all those update notices in my email. So, commmmeeee on buddy give us an update!!!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've taken a break from this model and now its back to work! The tile decals are coming along very nicely, but there a little bit of catching up to do with you guys, so here we go with the last bit of cargo bay equipment, a storage box. I could not find any information what the box contained.

I started off with a 5 sided box made from styrene sheet then glued a rod to the inside to hold it without damaging the putty. Epoxy putty is rolled into a thin sheet between two pieces of plastic then applied to the box. A little bit of alcohol thinner makes the putty stick to the plastic quite well. The edges are cleaned up and the insulation buttons are made by poking little holes with a toothpick.

Sprayed white with a dark grey wash, the plastic tube is broken off and the box glued to the inside of the bay.

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Edited by Vince Hoffmann
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Vince,

It's great to see you are back to working on this one again. :) The insulation you applied to the storage box looks exactly the same as the insulation in the payload bay. Well done!! :thumbsup:

Mike.

Edited by crowe-t
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