EVAPodman's Chinese Satellite

[evapodman]

I want to comment about one change I made to the chinese satellite.

I felt nervous about the forward section being supported by that one thin resin piece, so I trimmed the ends off the detail piece and carefully drilled the center out of it so a 5/32 dia. brass rod could go thru it ( the approx same dia. as the resin rod).

This now supports the forward section and I will never have to worry about it sagging or breaking. The process was fairly easy and was done in a short period of time also.

[evapodman]

Being a simple kit it is already about 90% done. I'm just waiting for some acrylic rod to come in for the support and then I will drill out a hole in the main body at a 30 degree angle. When done the model should appear like it does in the movie.

Once the support hole is drilled out I'll start masking off the gray areas and doing the final paint job. By then I hope to have a friend take some digital pics that I can share with others.

[Model Man]

Cool! Adam recently mentioned to me that the brass rod helps immensely.

Getting any pix as you go? Even if not, tips like that are great!

Look forward to hearing more of this build!

[evapodman]

Here is the link to the photobucket site where I have pics of my satellites including my version of the Mad Dog Resin USAF sattellite:

s61.photobucket.com/albums/h61/2001ship/2001%20sattelites/

I have Adams model of this sattellite and the Red Dog one has been languishing for years. I modified earlier it based of the work I saw here, but lost interest in the kit after Adam's came out.

I then thought about doing it like a "real" sattellite would look like based on present knowledge. My inspiration was the failed Russian Mars probe that failed soon after launch.

The body is coated in gold foil to simulate the gold mylar sheets used to protect spacecraft today. I will also add RCS thrusters and various types of dish antennas.

The sattellite is designed to be serviced in orbit by the shuttle, so it has many access panels inplace to allow astronauts to work on it. The hexagonal structure in the back is where it attaches to the shutlle for servicing.