Atlas MA-6 "Freedom 7" 1/96

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Time for another inbetweenie. This time an addition to my ever growing rocket garden. This is the Atlas-D (E? F? This ancient Atlas alphabet soup has been making me slightly dizzy) which lifted John Glenn into orbit in 1962. I used silver card for the hull and the fairings and cable runs. Lots of it was glued with CA. The engines were made from thick grey card and I used some bare metal foil for the silver accents. the kits used were Mark Cable's remake of the precision paper models Atlas model and Carl Hewlett's Mercury capsule, reduced in size to 1/96. The lettering on the hull was done with decals I printed myself.

I used a printing medium on the silver card because the inkjet ink originally wouldn't hold onto the paper, it just formed little balls of ink and wouldn't dry up in a nice line. This medium is called "Digital Ground for non-porous surfaces" by a brand called Golden. Billy Leliveld told about it on the forum some time ago.

It appeared very useful into having the print in fine lines onto the silver paper. Only disadvantage was that it still was very sensitive to water. I made some nasty fingerprints during gluing and tried to wipe them off. I wiped the ground layer off.
Should I have fixated it? If so, I didn't know that.
Anyway, then I discovered that the stuff we Dutchies call Glassex and is internationally more known as Windex, completely erases all of the print layer very easily, leaving a great shiny surface without any lines or spots. I decided to go on building and make the hull and clean it with glassex/windex afterwards. In the end it left me with a shiny Atlas hull in 1/96. I knew I had to make the necessary lettering and numbering on the hull myself. I recently learnt myself how to make my own decals so here was the second rocket I could practice on.

The engine housing was made from aluminium coloured paper and I cut out strips to simulate the corrugated effect on the hull. The vernier engines were rolled pieces of paper.
The engines again were great renditions of the real stuff. The sustainer engine in the middle a big bulky bucket shape, the booster engine bells a more subtle bell shape. I scratched the plumbing on the sustainer. the turbo pump exhaust got some struts made from pins.

All in all, a nice little exercise. It has been a very hot day here, it's time to go and sit on the roof terrace and enjoy a cool glass of white wine, some filled paprika's for dinner and the cool afterglow of the evening.

[HMCS]

I love how the capsule came out! very crisp and clean!

[Retired_for_now]

Very nice! Love the garden ... talent, brains, and enthusiasm make great fertilizer for growing these things.

Yogi

[mbauer]

Great looking Atlas, nice garden!

Mike

[WeeVikes]

PK, you never cease to amaze!


Mike

[Leif Ohlsson]

That is a classic rocket in my book. Remember going with my father to a public viewing of a film made from the onboard camera's photos of John Glenn. Nothing like the films we have today, where the camera mostly is directed towards mother Earth, producing breathlessly beautiful footage. Still, didn't know anything about what was to come at the time, and thought of nothing but rockets and Mercury capsules for years thereafter.

Thanks for showing so much of this excellent build. I admire the precision - and the metal sheen - of your execution.

Leif

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Thanks for all the kind words! Seeing you all enjoy this little legendary candle makes me glad.

I still want to do the Redstone version. *adds to the long list*

[umtutsut]

Great work, PK! Some good tips there for when I build Surfduke's 1/48 version sometime this century....

Les ("The Voice of Authority" -- Coming Soon)

[obwand10]

Once again, AMAZING!

[mk310149]

very nice, great work!