[Wichita]

I am very new to model building but have been lurking around this site for several months. I am particularly interested in real space models and appreciate when others document a work in progress. My first paper model was the Lunar Surveyor in 1:24 scale which I downloaded from the Lower Hudson Valley Paper Model E-Gift Shop and finished about a month ago. It turned out okay and the lessons I learned on that first model gave me the confidence to try something more complex. I came across UHU02's Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius model and am excited to try building it.

This will be my first ever attempt to document a work in progress. I look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.

My first job was to download the instructions from UHU02's website. I used Google Translate to put them into English, but the translated instructions are a bit difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the pictures are excellent and easy to follow.

Next was to figure out the scale then to size it up to 1:24 to match the Lunar Surveyor mentioned above. I used Vincent Meens 1:24 LM-5 blueprint as a comparison. Not sure how scientific my method was, but I came up with needing to print UHU02's model at 158%. Since my inkjet printer is not made for large format printing, I had to crop the pdf sheets to print everything out on legal size card stock (8.5" x 14"). A handful of parts would not fit on that size, but I was able to get access to a color laser printer to print those few parts on 12" x 18" sheets.

Now to start the building process. Parts 1 and 2 are each folded in half with a piece of card stock in between, basically ending up a 3-ply part with printing on both sides. My first attempt at laminating using white glue did not work very well, so I tried necroscoping using plastic from Ziploc sandwich bags. (I learned about the method in the Tips and Tricks forum.) It worked great. Here is the result.