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  #81  
Old 08-19-2016, 07:32 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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Part 208a is a basic tube with two bends in it. I find small diameter tubes difficult to form. I used a mandrel to shape then slid the mandrel out before the glue dried. Then I added the bends to the tube. It mounts onto the aft section marked with a black circle.

There are 2 identical parts numbered 208b. Both are folded in half for 2-sided printing. They are meant to represent some of the RCS plumbing on the left and right sides of the aft section. They were surprisingly challenging to position onto the aft section due to a very tight fit.

Part count to date: 338
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-19-19.50.36.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-19-20.55.13.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-19-20.56.00.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-19-20.56.13.jpg  
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  #82  
Old 09-07-2016, 03:11 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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Part 209 is folded in half for two sided printing, and forms 2 legs of the mounting bracket for the S-Band Steerable Antenna. Part 210a and 210b form the main leg of the mounting bracket for the antenna. Part 210a is rolled into a tube and part 210b is rolled into a cone shape which goes on the end of the tube. I find tubes to be a bit difficult to do, but brushing a small amount of water on the back of the part before rolling it help it to be more flexible and to hold its shape better. I learned that in the "Tips and Tricks" section of the Papermodelers forum. To help stiffen the part, I slid a lollipop stick into the tube/cone. Now it is quite sturdy.

Parts 211a, b, c, and d form part of the S-Band Steerable Antenna. Part 211a is a partial sphere with a flat lid and forms the motor box of the antenna. Part 211b and 211c form the structure that connects the motor box, electronics box, and dish. Kind of odd pieces that form a rather complex shape. 211b has a tube on one end and a simple box on the other, and 211c has a cone on one end. Part 211d is a simple box that forms the electronics box.

Parts 212a, b, c, and d form the front and back of the antenna dish. Each has a slightly different depth so that when they are pasted back to back give the dish a small amount of thickness between them. Parts 213a, b, and c form the receiver in the center of the dish. 213a is a cap that goes over the end of part 213b which is a very short tube that goes over part 213c which is a short cone. This assembly is attached to the center of the white side of the antenna dish.

Since the antenna is a rather prominent feature of the LEM, I touched up the edges with paint before final assembly, and wrapped the mounting bracket (parts 209 and 210) with household aluminum foil and small strips of kapton tape.

When attaching part 211b/c to part 211a I found a small problem. The side of part 211a that attaches to part 211b/c is pretty wide open and does not form cleanly around part 211 b/c. To remedy the situation, I cut a small piece of card stock to the shape of the end of part 211a, and cut a small hole the size of part 211b/c so it would slide in easily. I then painted it to match. Pretty easy fix, but was surprised it was missed in the design. I am not adding this modification to the total part count since I view it is a piece of part 211a.

Part count to date: 352
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-20-18.41.23.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-20-19.28.21.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-20-19.29.59.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-20-19.31.02.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-11.08.32.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-11.31.50.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-11.32.10.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-11.32.30.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-11.50.15.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-20.22.23.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-21.29.16.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-21.41.22.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-21-21.50.04.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-22-20.17.04.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-22-20.22.26.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-22-20.26.13.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-22-20.36.22.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-22-20.36.42.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-27-19.49.41.jpg  

Last edited by Wichita; 09-07-2016 at 03:19 PM. Reason: Missed a step of the construction process.
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  #83  
Old 09-07-2016, 03:47 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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Parts 214 through 220 form the Rendezvous Radar Assembly.

Parts 214a, b, and c, form one side of the mounting bracket, and parts 215a, b, and c, form the other side. Parts 214a and 215a are pretty straight forward except that the long end of one of the sides is curled over to hold in parts 214b and 215b, which are short tubes. Parts 214c and 215c are small caps that go on the end of those short tubes.

216a, b, and c are tubes/cones that form the cross-shaped structure that attaches the radar dish. Part 217a is a short tube that goes on the end of that structure, with 217b being a small cap on the end of that. Pretty straight forward.

218a is the attachment bracket for the dish. The red dot should be removed. I did not realize that when forming the part and had to cut it out later which was quite a challenge to do without damaging the part. The hole is needed because part 216a has to slide into that hole to mount the dish. Part 218b forms the back side of the dish which is pretty straight forward, except that the red dot should be cut out of that part as well, something I did not do until after I formed the part. Again, a tricky thing to do after-the-fact.

219a, b, and c form the front side of the radar dish which is pretty straight forward except that 219a has very small tabs on 4 corners which have to be cut very carefully due to their small size.

The back side of the dish (218) is carefully aligned and attached to the front side of the dish (219) which when joined has a small space in between to add depth to the part.

Part 220a is a small cone attached to the center of the dish. Part 220b is a 4-legged piece also attached to the center of the dish. The 4 legs attach to the 4 small tabs of part 219a. It was pretty tricky to get to look straight and even.

For final assembly, the dish was slid onto the cross-shaped structure, and the two arms of the cross-shaped structure slide into parts 214b and 215b. I did not have to glue them for them to stay in position. I think that will work very nicely in the end which will make it possible to orient the dish to any direction I choose and it will stay in place.

Since this is such a prominent feature, I touched up the parts with Tamiya acrylic paints mixed by hand to get close to the right color. Straight black is just too dark. It took a bit of white and blue to get close to the right tone of the printed parts. This may vary depending on your specific print quality.

Part count to date: 370
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-31-20.20.21.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-08-31-21.36.04.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-02-21.54.01.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-04-18.55.36.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-04-18.56.00.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-04-18.56.28.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-04-18.56.41.jpg  
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  #84  
Old 09-08-2016, 04:19 AM
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Tonino Tonino is offline
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Regarding part 220b I also had big troubles to give it a regular shape. I don't know why UHU02 choose to give it that strange angle. Perhaps to give the tip a conic edge? Anyway I preferred to redraw it as a simple cross and override the problem (the custom part it's included in my "detail kit"...)
Another thing I noticed only when the antenna build was over (I'm sorry perhaps I should have warned you before...) is that, according to the photos of the real LEM, the 4 legs of the above mentioned part should be mounted at a different angle (if you look from the front it should appear as a "X" and not as a "+"). But this is not a major issue anyway. I, for sure, didn't think about re-doing it not even for a second! ;-)
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  #85  
Old 09-08-2016, 06:56 AM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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Tonono: That is a very interesting detail about the rendezvous antenna part being mounted as an "X" rather than a "+". Never noticed that before. I mounted it as a "+" because of lining up the seams of the part, not even considering the possibility that the orientation was inaccurate.

As I think about it, knowing how my eyes are drawn to things that look misaligned or out of place, if I rotated the part 45 degrees to form the "X" my eyes would probably be drawn to the seam and perceiving it as a mistake. For that reason I will leave it as-is, considering it a compromise trading off historical accuracy for aesthetics. Plus it would be a lot of work to re-engineer the part and build up again.

Thanks for the comments!
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  #86  
Old 09-11-2016, 06:20 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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There are two sets of parts 221a/b which form the two VHF antennas (4 parts total). Part 221a folds in half to make two sided printing which forms the main part of the antenna. Only 2 ends of the antenna have the little ball at the end, although the real one has a little ball on all 4 ends, so I trimmed the part intentionally cutting off the ball ends so I could add my own. I then stiffened the very fragile part by coating it with superglue. Part 221b is rolled into a simple tube that forms the base of the antenna.

Since the antenna is a rather prominent part of the LEM, I was not satisfied with the 2-dimensional representation of the helical coils. I started out making a simple box to form the base of the coils. The center extension is made by cutting a piece of a cotton swab and unrolling some of it to make it thinner. The end cap is made by cutting a small slice of a lollipop stick. The coils are made of monofilament plastic string that I think is usually made for making homemade necklaces. Pretty much like fishing line, but stiffer. It was a bit too stiff for this project so it took a bit of coaxing to work.

I drilled tiny holes into the attachment points to accept the string. After attaching the ends I gave the part a twist using tweezers to form the helix shape and then heated it with a blow dryer to get the plastic string to soften and hold its shape. After that I attached the center extension to hold in place. The helix assembly was then glued to the top of part 221.

To form the little balls at the 4 ends of the antenna I used a precision hole punch to create some tiny discs which were then superglued perpendicular to the ends. I added a few drops of glue to give them somewhat of a spherical shape.

To prevent them from getting damaged, I will not permanently mount the antennas to the LEM until later in the build.

Regarding the part count for the 2 antennas, there were 4 parts from UHU02s design, 6 scratch built parts, 8 discs for the ball ends, and 4 plastic strings (2 each antenna).

Part count to date: 392
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-08-21.14.43.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-09-19.48.49.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-09-21.13.55.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-09-21.51.13.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-10-20.55.29.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-10-21.08.55.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-10.22.51.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-11.31.46.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-10.32.36.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-11.50.04.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-12.01.38.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-11-12.15.36.jpg  
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  #87  
Old 09-12-2016, 03:06 AM
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Tonino Tonino is offline
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Your VHF build is absolutely GENIAL! Wonderful addition to your great build!
Bravo!
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  #88  
Old 10-08-2016, 01:23 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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The next phase of the build is to construct the birdcage. First comes the birdcage for the mid-section. Parts 222 and 223 form the backbone. They each fold in half for two-sided printing. Before gluing the two halves together they are bent to shape using the template on the part sheet. (It was difficult to find, but the shape template is on part sheet 6.) The two sides were laminated using a glue stick. Interestingly it was a bit challenging since it was not possible to press them flat due to the pre-gluing bends. After drying I carefully cut them out.

Parts 224, 225, 228, and 229 are also two-sided printing, but were much easier to glue because they are flat. 224 and 225 form the forward and aft bracings of the mid-section birdcage. Parts 226 and 227 form the bottom plates protecting the fuel tanks and also serve as attachment points for the birdcage, which I pre-formed before laminating. Parts 228 and 229 are the cross-braces of the birdcage.

I used a glue stick to do the laminating of all these two-sided parts, but it did not work very well for the birdcage parts. I think it may be because the contact surface areas are so small. After cutting them out many became delaminated. I used the gluestick to delaminate them, but I would suggest that any future builders use white glue, or perhaps the necroscoping method described in the "Tips and Tricks" forum.

Once all the parts were cut out, the first step was to attach parts 226 and 227 to the bottom of the mid-section below the fuel tanks.

Parts 224 and 225 are the forward and aft bracings of the birdcage. These were attached to the mid-section using the two tabs on the top edge, and attaching the lower edge to parts 226 and 227.

I next attached the top rung of parts 222 and 223 to the mid-section. This forms the backbone of the mid-section birdcage. Parts 228a through 228l are the cross-braces for the left side and were glued onto the mid-section piece by piece starting at the top and working my way down. It was a bit fiddly, but with patience, it all took shape with only minor trimming, tweaking, and bending. Parts 229a through 229k were installed in a similar way on the right side.

Once the mid-section birdcage was completed it was necessary to trim a few of the cross-braces so that they lay flush against the forward section once it is attached.

I did not take pictures of installing each cross-brace, but took several pictures of the completed birdcage from several angles so you can see how each piece is attached. I also took some before-and-after shots of the pieces trimmed to lay flush agains the forward section.

Part count to date: 421
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-16-19.47.48.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-16-19.53.28.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-23-21.33.40.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-24-20.53.19.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-24-20.53.34.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-24-20.57.38.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-09-24-21.23.44.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.49.24.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.49.30.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.49.37.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.49.53.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.49.58.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.50.12.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.50.48.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.50.59.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.51.21.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.51.31.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.51.40.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.51.51.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.51.59.jpg  

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  #89  
Old 10-08-2016, 01:31 PM
Wichita Wichita is offline
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These are additional photos associated with my previous post. I took more than usual of this step to clearly show the attachment points for all the cross-braces.
Attached Thumbnails
Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.52.08.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.52.28.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.52.47.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.53.53.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-20.59.59.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.23.48.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.24.21.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.24.42.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.24.55.jpg   Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.25.12.jpg  

Apollo 13 LM-7 Aquarius-2016-10-07-21.25.21.jpg  
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  #90  
Old 10-08-2016, 10:13 PM
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dhanners dhanners is offline
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Great work!
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