Sunday, March 6, 2022

Project Vanguard Satellite

 Wow have times changed.  I don't remember what I did as a kid, but knowing what I know now about correct assembly, making seam lines vanish, smooth painting etc... this kit drove me crazy, and it fought me all the second half of the build. 

The biggest problem was that there are a lot of labels as decals, and oddly only every 4th or 5th decal didn't disintegrate, but broke into a few chunks. Some I was able to slide into place, others I just couldn't. The worst was the one where it said Meteorite something or other. That one disintegrated, and as can be seen was only left with "Met."  Each label only had one copy, so that was that. But luck enough the whole core assembly goes inside the sphere, and can barely be seen. 

Then there was my superglue. I super glued the core to the bottom of the clear dome, and the core did everything but stick. It left me with a couple of glue marks on the clear part - no fogging so that's a plus.  The worst of my decals was the large title "Project Vanguard." The "P" broke apart as did the "G" in Vanguard. Bad enough that I had to get paint to fill in the letters.  It was enough to take the wind out of my sails. While I had other things I wanted to do, including adding Faux wiring to the core, I just put the top cover on and called it a day.  

Here are two shots of the finished satellite. Thanks for looking




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