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Space shuttle cockpit landing gear1/17/2024 The portions of the engine's outer skins between the cooling lines were done in Testor's Model Master Engine Gray and the cooling lines and purge lines were done in a "pseudo-Titanium" blend I did using Aluminum with hints of Gold mixed in. The easiest thing to do was to remove the loop and take the purge line all the way down to the bottom ring of the nozzle with thin plastic rod. Nowhere do any of the test or flight SSMEs have this feature. Tamiya's SSME's must have come from very early engine drawings, as the purge lines running along the sides of two of the engine bells have "loops" in them, right at the aft portion of the engine. The mains are very hard to work with once they are assembled onto the Orbiter, as Tamiya uses a screw and curved baker-plate to hold each engine onto the rear bulkhead, which allows the engine to "gimbal" or swivel as it does in real life, so, I decided to work on the engines separately.Īs the rear bulkhead will require tile detailing and engine gimbal shroud details applied, and those are better done without the engine on as well. It's a pity no one will ever see this detail once the model is done, So I decided to take photos of it now, while I could. the helmets were painted Flat White, and then the shields were painted on in Clear Blue, which worked out really well. The crew's faces were done with Testor's #1116 - Cream (nobody calls it "Flesh" anymore.) with slight highlighting to reveal facial details. Boots and gloves were done in black, and seat belts done in German Grey. So, we did the suits in International Orange, to replicate the "Pumpkin Suits" or the Launch & Entry Suits the crews actuality wear. Tamiya wanted to have the astronaut figures done with white suits, which looked like EVA suits, which were never worn on the Flight Deck. The faces of the panels were done in Aircraft Gray, along with the Flight Deck floor, and the outlying areas were done in Gunship Gray, to sublimate them visually. We used the panel decals supplied by Tamiya, but changed their color specifications. While the glues was setting up on the main fuselage assembly, we worked on the Cockpit. We chose to show the Orbiter in "in-flight" mode, so the landing gear doors are closed. We will not start at the beginning, as assembling the fuselage and wings are fairly straight-forward. The Spacelab hardware is included in the Tamiya kit, but we 're making some "modifications" along the way to improve the look of the finished product. I chose STS-9 - the first flight of the European Space Agency "Spacelab" module, flown by John Young (CDR) and Brewster Shaw (PLT) with a multi-national crew in 1984. So, I decided to try and build a "Columbia" model, using all of the components provided by Tamiya, but to a higher level of accuracy. In looking over my "inventory" of Space Shuttle models, it occurred to me that I only have one replica of OV-102, Columbia - that of the STS-1 stack in 1/144 scale - the Airfix model I built in 1982 after returning from the STS-1 launch trip, that is now resting on the Edu-Craft 1/144 scale MLP and Crawler-Transporter. Or, the problems could have come from using Orbiter OV-101, the "Enterprise" as the reference, as this model was first produced fairly early in the Shuttle Program - decals for only Enterprise and Columbia are furnished. While the Tamiya product line is typically very well molded and detailed, there are some problems withe the kit, that probably stem from using early or developmental drawings of the Orbiter.
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