OlCabour's Hangar

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jeudi, 30 mai 2013

Space1999 tanks - lunar base

To highlight them, they needed a base. Again, I made a lunar ground, like I have done for my other Space1999 dioramas. To do this, I get a foam board (here a failed part from a first try for the Launchpad, its shape can easily be see ;) ). The shape will be half-arc. I have to complete a part, that I wantes to be thicker to have the dawn of a lunar dune. The ground was shaped with a heat gun.

It is covered white a mixture of black oil-based paint and roughcast. Then a light gray is airbrushed as much razing as possible and keeping the same direction. The result is a very dusty effect.

The background is an image created on the computer, using photos from NASA for the lunar surface, and a large starfield background I found on the web. It is then printed on a poster photo paper. It is ~ 70cm long! So I went through a printshop on the net.

Two quick shots I take, just after the installation of my Space1999 stand at Geekopolis convention (in Paris) last week-end. Il will do better ones later.

Space1999 tanks - Photos

Some beauty shots, with the tanks laying on Main Mission tower diorama, which gives a nice feeling.

Model E

Model F

Model H

lundi, 27 mai 2013

Space1999 tanks - Final assembly

Then final assembly where the hot spot is focused on soft plastic tracks on which any of my glues seemed to work. After surfing on military model websites, there really is no miracle solution! Ideally you have to heat the small spikes sticking out. If I could do it on two tracks, the other 4 were from kits not all young and broke the track when the twist was too strong. In these cases, the caterpillars have been dn form by heating near a candle, then glued directly to the wheels with superglue gel enriched cahoutchouc which hangs here a little better than the classic superglue (this tip comes from a military website).

And here's the final result :

Model E

Model F

Model H

H compared to its Product Enterprise cousin

3 sets

And 4 with PE

mercredi, 22 mai 2013

Space1999 tanks - Painting

Like other Space1999 Earth's vehicles and ships, the base color is not pure white, but slightly off, so I mixed Tamyia matt white with a few drops of sky gray (Tamiya Xf19). Placed on white, the mixture looks gray. But in a darker environment, the eye and the camera accommodates it as a white.

(Today, if you look closely, you will find an off topic intruder)

The provided decals are of average quality : some have an apparent and unsightly frame, colors are too dark (the orange is brown red for exemple). So I realized most of panels, gray and black by hand, with the airbrush or other sparing decals as appropriate.

After a coat of clear varnish, a light black wash is applied to enhanced the details, then a matt coat : PrinceAugust Air thinned with Tamiya thinner (this trick avoids white marks).

Model H

Model E

Model F

mardi, 21 mai 2013

Space1999 tanks - Cleaning parts

There are some bubbles on much parts, but the problem is that their number increased about three times because of underlying ones, appearing after the first cleaning works. So I apply my hedgehog method :) : they are filled with plastic rods and superglue. It is much faster and efficient than putty.

I

Some wedges are needed to align the trunk parts on the back page of the Model F

The front part of the model F was slightly bent, it was corrected after a quick bath in hot water.

At the rear of the model H, there is a so large bubble in the can that it is better to completely replace it. It is redone with some tree part from a plastic kit, the claddings are simply made with Tamiya tape.

Some grooved part are very thin on the guns, and I had "fun" cleaning then and redone some with some spare flash material laying on the workbench.

The barrel of the model F is wrong and need to be sanded to the correct shape.

On the underbody, are often stems that also did not survived the casting. It did not matter because they inspired me very little confidence and would surely not had supported the track tension. So I cut everything, and I replace them with metal rods.

Thermoformed transparent parts (cockpit domes) are prepared. We can see that one of them had no chance and see decked out with a fold that I had not seen at the opening of boxes. Not having the time to make a new master, I use it as is. It will glued with the repositionable Microscale glue, so I will be able to easily remove and change it later.

Space1999 tanks - Wheels

Each wheel is in 2 parts (the inner side from the Airfix kit, and its resin counterpart outer), and since there are 8 wheels on each side of each tank, it's 96 parts ... just for wheels! And although they were not included in the kit and not mentionned in the instruction, i had to add tiny wheels (3 by side, so 18 more wheels to dig into the Airfix kits). These tiny wheels used to hold the upper side of the tracks on the chieftain AFV. The cleaning of the parts is tedious, so useless to say that all that has occupied me several evenings ...

On the resin sprockets (wheels with teeth), most teeth did not survived (for those who were still there when get out of the mold in my opinion...). So, same story, I'll remake them with Airfix ones, saving the central dome with a punch. Some of the resin tensioning wheels (small and toothless ones) are oval, so I'll have to modify parts, again from Airfix kits, to remade them.

A tablet, Doc' ?

dimanche, 19 mai 2013

Space 1999 - Infernal machine Tanks

These are three small models that I had not had the opportunity to address for my previous Space:1999 exhibition (Migennes Collector 2012).

As it will be exibited again (Geekopolis - Paris / may 2013), this was the opportunity to look into them.

These three tanks appears in only one episode "The infernal machine", where are destroyed rather quickly !

These resin kits are produced by James Small, and are in scale with Product Enterprise, Airfix, and Warp Eagles. They each require a supplementary kit: the chieftain tank Airfix 1/72 for axles, wheels and tracks. For note, the studio models were all based on three Tamiya radio-control kit of this AFV in 1/25th scale.

The scale is usually given for 1/72 in line with Product Enterprise Eagles, Warp and Airfix. As for the latter, the scale is an endless debate, so I will say that navigates between 1/72 and HO 1/100). In my other dioramas, I placed the Alpha moonbase kit's characters (~1/100), and they are going very well next PE eagles..

So, what can we found in the zip bags :

Model E

It has a cockpit inspired by the eagle's nosecone. From my point of view, this is the coolest of the 3.

Model F

Product Enterprise had produced this model in a set including small jeep, eagle laboratory and boosters.

Model H


What is the accuracy to the original models ? Overall, this is pretty good. There are a few shortcuts with details, but it does the trick.

Curiously, the tank model E (with the Eagle-like nosecone), some raised panels would normally only be done with decals or paints. Anyway, I decided to keep them.

Highlighted with pink stabilo:

Similarly, on the tank model H topside, near the bubble cockpit, a detail has nothing to do there!


The quality of the molding is average, there are lots of bubbles and a lot of cleaning work to do : flash, warp...

On, the other side, this white resin is easy to work with.