Monday, July 13, 2015

New Horizons in 1:5th scale

Been busy for a while. I was commissioned by a NJ Science Center to build a New Horizons (NH) probe. The only instructions I had was to make it as close to 24" as possible. Naturally I jumped at the project. 
The first thing I had to do was to get large sized plans of NH. I took the .pdf blue prints from the New Horizons site, printed them out and took them to my local Staples. what I got back fit the bill perfectly --

NH blueprint with an 18" ruler for scale.


The next item I had to deal with was how was I going to make the High Gain antenna. At this scale the antenna was supposed to be about 15 inches in diameter.  I've done a few vac-form things, but nothing of this scale. For this a went to The Replica Prop Forum and asked for help.  Al from South Texas Model and Design stepped up and offered to help.  I gave  him the info and in less than 10 days I had my HGA. 
Afterward he asked and I gave the ok for him to post a "how-to" on how he did what he did. Look at it here --
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=241003

The start and end pics look like this --




Next was for me to start cutting foam. I initially had a problem with my foam cutter and went old school with a sharp knife. No Good. I was just hacking the foam up. After getting what I can best describe as a hot wire table saw, things went a lot smoother --


 What you're seeing above is the internals for the model. I had to include a shaft way for the base to be and the circular instrument to the left is LORRI
Next the bus was covered up and seams sealed --

Once again we can see the base shaft way, LORRI and the item in between is the Star Tracker. Next image shows the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), and a few of the other experiments -- Low Gain Antenna, SWAP, Alice, Ralph, and Pepssi --





Now it was time to foil the craft and add the experiments. There was a few places where I had to compromise accuracy for durability. As I didn't know if this would be in a case or out for people to touch.  Here's the final images  --





Thanks for looking.

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