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Horizon Models - Mercury-Redstone 1/72 new kit


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I am in the process of building the Horizon Mercury-Redstone and I think it is a great kit with fantastic details not seen before in plastic model kits of a Mercury-Redstone in 1/72 scale. Its about 100 times more detailed than the 1/72 Dragon Mercury-Redstone. The Dragon MR didn't have rivets or the thrust directional vanes under the exhaust nozzle to name but 2 details. Even though this model is great in detail there were still things I didn't like and wanted to improve on. The biggest complaint was making MR3 Mercury spacecraft (porthole version Freedom 7) that required covering up the newer rectangular window with a PE(photo etched) hull section. Then adding 2 portholes again with PE parts, this had the disadvantage of making the portholes pop out instead of into the hull of the spacecraft. Than adding the older non explosive bolt hatch with you guessed it a PE part. The hatch would have turned out good since it is to be raised from the hull. The last thing I didn't like was you had to assemble the spacecraft from 3 pieces to make the main hull, not so easy in 1/72 scale. The boiler plate capsule also in the same kit comes in one part, why not the later manned spacecraft? I found that "Crows Nest" on Shapeways had a 1/72 portholes version (highly detailed and in one piece) for the Dragon Mercury-Redstone kit. Well since it is a part for a Dragon kit instead of the Horizon kit there where some things that need to be brought over from a Dragon Mercury capsule. The Dragon Mercury-Redstone kit is long gone but I found you can buy many prebuilt versions of MR4 (Liberty Bell 7) on eBay, I didn't say this would be cheap. You need the heat shield & the parachute canister nose which can be separated from a prebuild without breaking them. The Crows Nest capsule is a little small so the heat shield from the Dragon is needed to add height to the capsule so it will sit on the Redstone OK. You still have to sand the heat shield down a little to fit the Crows Nest capsule. Also needed is the antenna fairing/recovery compartment combination from the Dragon. The antenna fairing on the Horizon model is a separate part while the recovery compartment is attached to the Horizon capsule. Take my word for you need the two dragon parts. 

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The reto pack doesn't matter since it will be hidden when the capsule is glued to the Redstone.

I used Testors metalizer Exhaust for a off flat black color.

 

I also was not happy with the LES (launch Escape System) tower from Horizon which must be assembled from several parts and you have to re-drill the holes in the base ring to fit the 3 sides of the LES structure. Not an easy feat in 1/72. Shapeways to the rescue again this time by "The Aerospace Place", just search Shapeways for "Mercury LES". Use the more expensive by $3 FXD version. Comes completely assembled ready for paint (I leave mine in the sun for a day to cure before painting). 

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From the top down:

1. The Aerospace Place unpainted LES

2. The Aerospace Place painted (I used Testors Chevy Engine Red for that little orange tint in the red)

3. Dragon version (much larger exhaust nozzles) you get a LES when you buy a pre-built Liberty Bell 7, so if you would rather use the Dragon version it comes pre-painted. But I think this LES is less accurate in dimensions. 

4. The Horizon LES (I used a Horizon LES & boiler plated capsule on a 1/72 little Joe by Real Space Models)

 

The last thing I found was the PE parts (PER4) to be glued under the adaptor only after you have painted the model & added the checker board decal on the top section of the Mercury-Redstone. I was wondering how to do that and paint the PE part white & black with out painting the decal. If you chip away some paint under the adaptor with a exacto blade & then super glue the PE parts only on the top. You can slip a small piece of paper under the bottom of the PE part while you paint it so as not to over paint the decal.

You could prepaint the PE parts but there are very very small.

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I will upload a photo of the finished model after its done.

 

Edited by Solo7
clarity on part names
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IMG_3252.JPG.c920b000eee70f51d2714aebd5d80bd8.JPG

Here is the finished Horizon Mercury-Redstone next to a Dragon MR that came prebuilt. I added some decals to the Dragon MR to ID it as MR8 (Liberty Bell 7). You can see the Horizon MR is longer and the checkerboard pattern on the top of the Horizon MR is smaller. The biggest problem with the prebuilt Dragon is that the black & white pattern between the fins is repeated on both sides. On the other side one quarter between the fins should be all white & the next quarter should be all black. This one mistake on the dragon really bugs me. Remember they are both 1/72 scale.

Edited by Solo7
Add scale info
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  • 1 month later...

Hi,

 

Marvelous models, Solo7.:thumbsup:

 

I have been wondering about how Mercury capsule functioned.

*At which time was the LES tower jettisoned from the capsule? The Horizon Models box with the two capsules (kit #2003) shows one floating though space with that tower still attached. If figure this may have been illustrated this way to show what's in the box.

*The Horizon Models instructions for the Mercury capsule say the retro-pack is for "Launch and Orbit modes only". Should it not be there for Re-entry? Is it a typo and should really be "for Orbit and Re-entry only"?

 

Cheers, Stefan.

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For Redstone launches the escape tower was fired/jettisoned at the same time as the Redstone engine was cut off and before the capsule separated from the booster. Capsule/booster separation occurred about 10 seconds after engine cutoff. 

 

(edit) I got the 10 second info from Baker's "History of Manned Space Flight" p77. The NASA document referenced above states 9.5 seconds.   

 

The retro pack was jettisoned after the retro rockets fired and before re-entry. (except in the case of John Glenn's flight)

Edited by habu2
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On 4/27/2017 at 9:45 PM, Solo7 said:

 You can see the Horizon MR is longer and the checkerboard pattern on the top of the Horizon MR is smaller.

 

Solo7, a question about your post:

 

There should be 8 black/white pairs of stripes around the top of the booster. How many pairs are on each kit in your pic ?

 

I don't have the prebuilt Dragon, so I pulled out my unbuilt Dragon kit and was disappointed to see the Dragon kit decal has only 6 pairs of stripes.  My Horizon kit decal has the proper 8 pairs. How does this compare with yours ?

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habu2, I counted the black bars on the pre-built Dragon Redstone & I count 6 pairs, the Horizon has 8 pairs. There is a interesting note here that I should share with you about the "Roll Pattern" decal on the Horizon. If you look at the decal sheet you will see decal 3 & 4 are for overlap in case you need them. I needed them, so I think you will need them also. The roll pattern decal (#1) also had inspection doors outlined in gray. I didn't plan this well enough & part of the gray line was obscured by the overlap decal (my fault). If you plan it right after you put on the main roll pattern decal (#1) you can cover the white bar instead of the black bar.

 

I did not count the bars in NASA photos I used for kit assembly but I would bet Horizon is right & Dragon is wrong.

1.Changing the decals on the Dragon to MR-8 because the capsule has a rectangular window to match Liberty Bell 7.

I had to overpaint the MR-7 with 4 coats of white because the MR-7 decal was clear coated over.

2.Adding the Liberty Bell 7 name & white crack to the capsule 

3.Then overpainting the the correct black & white pattern between the fins.

Thats a lot of work to a a pre-made model to correct the larger errors.

 

Here is a link to the horizon Redstone page where you can click on the decal sheet & see what I am talking about.

http://www.horizon-models.com/1-72-mercury-redstone

 

 

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This isn't specific to the Horizon kit but I'll throw it in here anyway.

 

Roll patterns on US/NASA rockets are basically optical shaft encoders using standard binary encoding to determine rotation. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_encoder#Ways_of_encoding_shaft_position )

 

OK, in English: If you understand binary numbers this will make sense, if you don't then you can skip all this. Or, you can read it and you WILL understand binary numbers. :)   (as they say, there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't)

 

Let's say you paint one side of the rocket black and the other side white. If you consider the black side as a "0" (zero) and the white side as a "1" (one) you can precisely determine the roll position of the rocket with one bit of resolution.  You can interpolate between halves but you won't know precisely.

 

Now look at the pattern at the bottom of the Redstone around the fins. Think of the pattern painted on and between the fins as two parts, lower and upper. In this description a quadrant is the quarter of the body cylinder between two fins, and we read the colors in binary from the bottom up.  Starting with the all black quadrant, the binary representation would be "00" (decimal "0"). Going counter-clockwise, the next quadrant is black/white, binary "01" (decimal "1"), next is white/black, "10" (2) then all white is "11" (3). You now have a 2-bit precision (4 discrete positions) to determine roll.

 

At the top of the Redstone are 8 pairs of black/white stripes. Again in binary terms, this now gives you a 4-bit roll precision (16 discrete positions) when combined with the lower pattern. (technically, the third bit would always be "1" with the Redstone pattern but this is confusing enough already)

 

On a Saturn V, the S-II / S-IVB conical interstage has a 2-bit pattern just like the bottom of a Redstone, combined with the S-IC pattern gave an overall 3-bit pattern (8 discrete positions). There were no roll patterns on the S-IVB because by the time the first two stages were gone the S-IVB was too far away to see anything.

 

Some of the V-2s at White Sands had roll patterns based on binary encoding.  Why Atlas rockets had no roll patterns, I don't know. Some early Atlas ICBM versions had patterns but they weren't like what is described here. Titans are a bit different, as you can't really tell which side of the rocket you are seeing based on the roll pattern, only that it is rolling. The Saturn 1/ 1b had a 2-bit pattern around the fins, the interstage pattern upped that to 3-bit and the alternating colors on the eight tanks in the first stage bumped it to 4-bits.

 

In summary, now you know the logic behind roll patterns, and that's why there are 8 pairs of stripes on a Redstone, not the 6 pairs as depicted by Dragon - because 6 isn't a power of 2.

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