LLRV

The LLRV (Lunar Landing Research Vehicle) was a Project Apollo era program to build a simulator for the moon landings. 

From Astronautix.com :

The LLRV could take off and land under its own power, reaching an altitude of about 1,220 meters, hover, and fly horizontally. A fan turbojet engine provided a constant upward push of five-sixths the weight of the vehicle to simulate the one-sixth gravity of the lunar surface.

  This LLRV is a 1:72 model from 3 Stooges Productions.  The kit comes with a fret of photo etch, and a bag of about 10 resin pieces, and detailed instructions. It was sold through Tag Team Hobbies, and went through 2 editions, before I heard it went Out of Production. I guess the kit can be found on eBay, if you keep a look out. 

 
Having been intimidated with the PE, I was hesitant to start this one. But once started the metal was fairly thick so folding was fairly simple.

The first step I made was also a mistake. It calls for the enclosure of the pilot to be folded. Only until a short time later, when things were all super glued, did I see the text (over the picture obscuring it partially) to fold away from the groove, which is opposite of what I had done.  Ok, I guess I'm not using that part. The next few parts went a lot easier.

It wasn't long before the main assembly was built - 

Being that is craft is all metallic, I started off by painting the model a gloss black after adding the spherical tanks. The engine and the pilot seat is off to the side. The pilot is elsewhere drying. 

It was here that it was evident the craft looked rather sparse.  It was time to do some additional investigating.  Looking through the images it seems there was more than one vehicle. It turns out that there was a least four, with four vehicles made for each version. 
Being I messed up the enclosure, I couldn't use that one. But so far they all had attitude adjustment jets. scratching them in 1:72 was tough, but I did my best. Here you can see them in the white styrene. There are also two more spherical tanks by the rear one. Those were added using 8mm beads. 

Clear images was difficult to find. I could see there was a lot of wiring and plumbing, where they could be made out here and there, but extremely hard to follow any distance.- 

I was here that I decided it was time to buy the accompanying CD from Tag Team. I also found a modeler on the ARC forums, that was scratch building one in 1:18 scale! 
Be back soon with the next session. Thanks for looking.