Mars of Opposition

 Just a little heads up that if anyone reading this is in the NY/NJ area on March 3rd. My astronomy club, The NJAA will be having an open house timed with the opposition of Mars. while it's not a great opposition, it will be a very good one. Feature may be seen as well as one of the polar caps. Very Cool. Click the above link for more info.

Friede taking Shape

Not much to report tonight, except that The Fried has her "legs" now. It was a little difficult to get them centered as the lines we were supposed to use to line them up was a little wider that the width of the legs. So you had to sort of wing it so the legs were in the middle of the area between the two marks.  Looks ok to me, tho it won't win any awards. LOL

I just can't make things easy on myself...

Yeah, I know I haven't built a model in a year. Now I get the Friede started and what do I have to do? See the Destination Moon's Luna in my *to do:* pile. My eyes glaze over and I have to open it up take the parts out of the box and start trimming the flash off. Yeah, I'm going to build the two at the same time...

I was going to include an image of the parts, but for whatever reason, my phone is taking a million years to upload the pics. So instead I've decided to include a link to FP's page ans the kit is still available -

http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/DestinationMoonLuna-CatalogPage.htm

where you can scroll down a little bit to see the parts, and also take a look at the description of both the kit and the ship it's modeled after (a very nice touch IMHO).

According to the site, this was the first in a series of Classic Spaceships done in 1:288 scale.  The kit had a little flash on it - nothing major for a resin kit. But the fuselage had some problems. First thing I noticed is that there were two gouges in the side of the ship. Once I get my images downloaded I'll post the gouge shot here.  EDIT: Here are the pics of the gouges. I sanded a bit to make the resin around the gouges flush with the rest of the surface.The original looked like something got stabbed into the rocket and forced plastic above the surface. WEIRD...

Again nothing major but surprising since most of FP kits are *very* clean.  The next thing I noticed was that the bottom of the ship where the exhaust ring attaches was rather oval instead of what I expected should be round. It did take a bit of careful sanding to get the exhaust area round. 
A major pluses for the kit is the nice symmetric look to the fuselage, and the circular moon base. I'll definitely be taking some extra time time painting the lunar base up. :-)
So that's it for now. Next the parts will take a bath and get the mould release washed off and then time to attach the parts.
And yes, I'm expecting to get them both completed by the end of the month (ok at least the Friede)...   :-o

A Little Primer

With the way the "legs" of Friede are, I gave the insides of them a little primer and white spray as once they are attached I won't get another chance to get the inside painted.

Once the paint dries,  the next step will be to attach the braces for the legs and to attach them on the body.

Friede - The next step

As with all resin kits you need to give them a thorough was with degreaser soap to get the mold release off the parts. Fantastic Plastic suggests  submerging the parts in a soapy water solution for 24 hours. I've always just gave them a wash with some degreasing kitchen soap and an old toothbrush. We'll see how the easier soak works.
So as to show I'm making progress ;-) here's a pic of the parts drying off and showing what the parts look like.

Next step will be attaching the legs and then a shot of primer...

Gonna Try This Again

Busy times have left me little time with trying to do some of my hobbies. But this New Years I made myself a resolution to "try and get one model done every 2 months." so of course Jan. flew by and now I have just a few weeks of Feb. left to get something done. Before I ruin my resolution before it even starts I've picked Fantastic Plastic's Rocketship Friede - http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/RocketshipFriedePage.htm  . From the FP site - -

"In 1927, in the wake of his stunning success with his sci-fi opus "Metropolis," German director Fritz Lang decided his next movie would be a sprawling silent melodrama based on mankind's first trip to the moon.  To make his movie as technically accurate as possible, Lang enlisted the aid of already-famous spaceflight cheerleader Wiley Ley who, in turn, corralled Romanian-born rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth into the project.  The centerpiece of Lang's new feature, "Frau im Mond" ("The Woman in the Moon,") was the spaceship "Friede" (named after the movie's titular character), based on the Modell E rocket from Oberth's treatise "Die Rakete."  An extra stage was added to the E, making the "Friede" longer and more cylindrical than its predecessor, but keeping in place the rectangular "legs" that provided support and aerodynamic stability for the spacecraft."

So we'll see you in a day or two as I will post some WIP pics.