the Firefly project

[duditz72]

Please fight the good fight I think you have a lot of people waiting with baited breath to build this. Present company included.

[Sithcundman]

You think you've got problems...

[aeryn43]

Originally Posted by Sithcundman

You think you've got problems...

Where did you get that Tardis interior.....I want one....please please...

[Mirco]

Thank you all for your support!

Originally Posted by rbeach84

...if only the film/TV producers would create their own 'real' ships so us modelers would have an easier time of it! ...

So say we all .
Of course you didn't discourage me, I like to be criticized .

So, here we go - the catwalks are finished:

Railings and support struts will be drawn unfolded, they are too easy to bother with them now.

BTW, a gantry (is that the right word?) crane under the ceiling would be exactly the detail I've been missing all the time. I'll at least include some rails to suggest it was there and was removed when the owner started to use the cargo bay as a living room .

Now the med bay door, inner airlock door, upper hatch and the promised beams and bulkheads... and then we'll go upstairs.

[Sithcundman]

Originally Posted by aeryn43

Where did you get that Tardis interior.....I want one....please please...

I made it myself by rescaling textures and props from Download Sets

Since it's only 40% my own work I'd be very iffy about sharing copies...sorry.

[sjsquirrel]

Mirco - No problem with those tubes. I've done it. Plain paper (20lb, or very thin card - say 32lb) rolled around a 1mm wire, then hardened with superglue (CA glue). It's tricky getting the roll started, but once you get it going not too bad. I also saw an ingenious technique somewhere - can't remember where at the moment where some guys made .5mm tubes by wrapping a long thin strip around a piece of wire (think of a spring) and then applying glue to the outside. Once it dries you slip the tube off the wire.

The hard part is finding a piece of wire that size that is straight AND stiff enough not to bend while you're using it. I've had some success making small solid cylinders by sanding down a round toothpick and gluing it to the paper first, but that's no good for hollow ones.

Keep up the great work.

Steve

Originally Posted by Mirco

Thank you too. Good luck with the shuttles!

The answer to who is going to cross the line first is easy: not me . I'm quite busy now before Christmas, so my speed of an asthmatic ant with a heavy shopping dropped even lower.

Here is a progress picture for this week (or actually for the two hours on Sunday):


Cargo ramp actuators are finished (another little dimensional compromise between screen-accuracy, blueprint proportions and functionality, as usual ). 2 mm paper tube rolled around a 1 mm wire - I wonder if they are buildable at all...
Next thing to do: laminated surface details of the bay exterior. Necessary to determine total thickness of the walls and therefore dimensions of the interior bulkheads.

[Mirco]

Thank you for the tips, Sjsquirrel. I'll give it a try.

Weekend job results:

We're looking from the top-left-front corner of the workspace. The green thing are the dining area interior walls, floor and ceiling. Red squares on the floor indicate positions of the airlock ceiling hatches (will be openable).
So far, the interiors blended in quite well, including connection with all bulkheads and the stairs at the front. The only little glitch is that the shuttle access airlocks will have to end in the dining area, completely changing the layout of the room. Call it an artistic license .

(off-topic)
I finished installing a new CAD-capable computer yesterday, so I'm no longer limited to weekends only. By the way, does anybody know if there are any Windows 98 SE drivers available for Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic xB motherboard? The "designed for Windows 2000" label suggests no and I couldn't google anything up, but maybe it's just a matter of where to look...? (W98 is a must because the CAD doesn't work anywhere else)
(/off-topic)

[imcold]

ot: did you tried running the cad soft in virtual machine? that way you wouldn't have to use Win98 as the main operating system.

[Zathros]

Originally Posted by imcold

ot: did you tried running the cad soft in virtual machine? that way you wouldn't have to use Win98 as the main operating system.

What he said. This should work V.M. easily. By the way, do you have 35 or 40 hour days there? This model is incredible!!

[Mirco]

Virtual machine? Yes, that could save the day. Thank you for the idea!

40 hour days? Unfortunately no. That's one of the reasons why the model is still not finished .