Preview of coming attractions....

[dhanners]

Thanks for the tips and photos, PK. I remember that model. Makes 1/288th scale look downright big....

The cockpit "hood" does give me pause. One thing I'm considering -- and it's all still just theoretical -- is to cover the appropriate areas with a lightweight paper printed with a brick pattern. I was thinking of doing that with the black HRSI tiles on the nose, and I thought, "Why not do that with the white areas, too?"

Of course that would mean I'd also need to cover the tiled areas of the mid-fuselage, OMS pods, tail and wings, too.

I've looked at the Fortezza shuttle to see how hard it would be to shrink it to 1/288th, but I'm going to give Alfonso's model a try first.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

I guess it's way too coarse for 288th, but I have considered using linen textured paper for the white thermal blanket parts of a regular 1/100 shuttle. It has a bit of that feel to it like the real shuttle has.

I once saw this great plastic Shuttle model made by Phil Smith (his site unfortunately is gone) who used surgical tape as thermal blankets and it looked awesome. But well, that was 1/72.

[dhanners]

I did the surgical tape thing ages ago. In fact, as far as I know I may have been the first one to do it. I wrote about it in Mike Mackowski's "Space in Miniature" book on the shuttle in the late '80's. I used the Revell 1/144th-scale kit and did a Challenger, and a few years later did a post-refit Columbia. Then I saw the light and switched to card....

Here's today's progress. The fuselage and wings weren't as much hassle as I thought they would be, but I deviated from Alfonso's instructions and internal parts in a couple of areas. There'll be some hinge detail to add, but I'll save all the small detail stuff until last.

[Algebraist]

Tremendous model David. I really don't know how you handle such small parts so accurately.

Just a shame (in my opinion) there aren't more photos. Any chance of more as you go along?

Regards

Kevin

[dhanners]

Ok, more photos it is....

The first couple of photos show my modifications to the internal structure. I beefed it up with strips of balsa to keep things straight and sturdy. The second photo shows my modifications to the nose of the internal structure. I trimmed it down after test-fitting the nose section.

The other photos show how far I got today. Tomorrow I'll hit the OMS pods and tail and maybe start on the SSMEs. Once done, there'll be some clean-up work to do then I can mate it to the ET/SRBs.

[Algebraist]

Great and thank you.

Kevin

[beckychestney]

Lookin good!

[dhanners]

Today's progress. Some clean-up tomorrow and it'll be ready for mating to the ET/SRBs.

I was going to plumb the SSMEs, but decided not to. Figured the plumbing would probably wind up over-scale in appearance. That said, I did use the Fortezza shuttle SSME bases so, for what it's worth, these engine bells actually gimbal. That was more work than I needed to do.