OlCabour's Hangar

To break the uniformity of the green walls of the hangar, I add some white, yellow, black and red panels with masks (the same as those used on the Galactica).

Some decals, from the sparebox and from the HO scale diesel loading service platform (danger signs...), are also applied on the walls, as well as on some of the furniture (tanks ...)

Two coats of matt white are applied on the service platforms and furniture warehouse.

The walls are covered with the Granny apple green in spray can.

The hangar ground received a grey color, and is ready for the markings.

The diorama is made from medium (wood) boards cut to size. It is designed to be removable and portable, which means here to made it easy to assemble/disassemble and to properly secure the staturoc details (triangles,...).

The boards are cladded with aluminum strips (i, L, square) to border all the areas I will detailed, and to create slides where the boards will be embedded boards.

A first rather thick PVC profile is bonded to the aluminum rod.

After that, the detailing takes place, with the famous triangles. The lapidary wheel, band sander, band saw are used to smoothly anf quickly carry out the job.

Both right and left walls are now detailed. The back wall is still in progress, because I run out of triangles. I need to mold some new ones.

The leaf in the center of this wall will be left open. Two slides are set in place to allow me the choice to add behind the wall a closed down leaf, or a mirror (which is likely to be the solution that I will use at Migennes). And it may well be left open, if ever one day I want to build another hangar to expose some Hawk, Ultraprobe, Swift, etc.

To fill the hangar, I will of course seriously dip into the spares box. However, I will have to find stairs, ladders, service platforms. In surfing on the web, and with the help of Alexandre Dumas (http://scihighmodels.com/) , I came to look for references in the HO scale (or 1/87, an electric trains scale). This is a scale quite close to 1/72 so it will be perfect. Eagles Airfix / Product Enterprises are also certainly closer to the HO than the 1/72 announced (a few years ago, I was even going for a 1/100).

So I ordered a few elements (platforms from Plastruct and Cornerstone brands) to make some tests. http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/wrr/wrr3104.htm http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/pls/pls1010.htm

Cornerstone: it is a loading platform of oil or petroleum. It is injected into a kit, the installation is relatively simple. All parts are not useful for my needs.

Plastruct: I was expecting a kit, and in fact, it is a scratch to build ... So I was really surprised. Rather than faithfully follow the instructions (low high plateform for loading wagons), I attacked directly the building of a platform for maintenance of a motor eagle therefore higher.

Thanks to Plastruct, I knew exactly identify the elements I needed to make more than a dozen platforms.

A fairly consistent order of rails and stairs only quickly followed (on a US site because Plastruct is no longer distributed in France). All other sections needed (I, U, L, H) are easily found here in Paris.

I always want to create a diorama of the eagles hangar, as it appears in this picture (from an old website - Cybrary, which was the bible of Space 1999 before the Catacombs

Cybrary has been integrated for a long time to Catacombs, but curiously, this picture has not followed the movement and now cannot be found on the net.

This view is never shown as is in the serie, but only in the background. In the first episode ("Breakaway"), we can see it with an eagle sliding in front of, then through a window in a shot where Koenig and Alan Carter are discussing about the metaprobe project. http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/main/cguide/umhangar.html

As I originally wanted a dio combined with the launchpad, I did set it the same dimensions, so 1.20 m x 1 m. Indeed, the initial idea was, while designing the two dio independently, to allow me to stack them if the exhibition place proved to not be enough. The launchpad taking the volume (it needs a box to hide the lifting mechanism), taking in weight by consequence, this option is unlikely to be implemented in the end. However, I decided to keep the same dimensions.

In the launchpad kit, I was surprized to received some of the walls parts (tetrahedron and detailed slabs). I realized casting molds of these parts as I will have close to 3 feet long of walls to cloth !

Initially, I also considered that the hangar would be within a one meter square, the remaining 20 cm on a side intended to be partially "filled" with little supervision room, where takes place the shot presented above, and where, later in the same episode, Koenig stop the metaprobe project. Finally, the hangar has taken the entire surface, and the supervisory room is gone.