Tom's Chinese Satellite

[Model Man]

Here she is.


There is one last mod I will do which is to put some mounting holes on each side of the body. The round protrusion is the perfect size for the mounting rig I have. When not in use, the holes will be covered by a simple piece of styrene. After surgery, I will post another vid.

Part 6 Finished!

[lunadude]

Great progress.

I love the embedded videos, but YouTube is blocked at work.

[Model Man]

Thanks, Mark. It's good to see you back online all regular-like after that mess in Galveston last year. I'm liking these embedded vids too! I don't know when probaords added the feature, but I'm glad they did.

From getting this kit last June, to starting it around XMas and finishing in late Feb, I think I spent about 10-20hrs on it. It wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be.

The support struts on the 'solar panels' could have been a slightly better fit. Putting a notch in command module's nook to align the solar panels properly would have been a help too. but eyeballing it the whole way worked out ok. In the final minutes I briefly debated replacing the three turrets and the solar panel struts w/ brass. However, as I was moments away from finishing, as opposed to days that would have added, I wussed out on that front.

I have to make a new wall display mount as I cut the support holes wrong. I'll vid and elaborate that problem later.

Looking forward to seeing how other folks tackled theirs!

[Model Man]

Oh, man! I'm nowhere near done! This is what I get for not checking the reference continuously!

I just looked in the ref section here and saw:

1. The 'gray bands' that go along the fins are actually a massive amount of ribbed texture!

2. I don't have the model in front of me, but it looks like I gotta do a huge pile of sub-paneling.

3. I'm also seeing that the 'four-pronged' dish I had to scratch build is actually bowl-ish in nature, not a plate with four prongs (on the brass rod).

4. There are more (small) detail 'plates' on the solar panels

5. And the plastic rod included in the kit also goes on the leading edge of the radiator fins, not just along the length as the directions suggested..

So... I guess this one joins my american satellite in the almost-done-but-not-quite pile of models. The additions should be easy enough. I will pre-paint all the details and glue them on. It looks like I will need a sheet of ever green half round first. Ah well.

I was thinking that when my Aries comes in, I would switch into a 2001 mode. If so, I'll do that, these two sats and possibly dig into my EVAPod too. It would be a sweet production line for a while!

[tagdot]

Sadly, I myself have been lax on working on my 2001 kits. I need to get down to business and sit at my workbench.

I want to try and get the satellites finished before the Aries shows up because I will probably get all revved up to tackle that one, not to mention the landing pad as being talked about in another section of this site as well as on Atomic City's site.

"So little to do and so much time to do it.....scratch that, reverse it." Gene Wilder-Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory