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Apollo 11 by Dragon


Dick Montgomery

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Recently completed, the Dragon Apollo 11 kit in 48th is a great project for any Real Space fan. This particular kit features the gold plated Descent Stage, which, I am told, was only applied to the 1st Run kits.

 

Anyway, here are two pics.

 

Apollo11LunarModuleEageDragon1100848thForwardRight.jpg

 

Apollo11LunarModuleEageDragon1100848thForwardLeft.jpg

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I bought one of these a couple months ago. How did you handle the glue areas on the coated parts. I anticipate a certain amount of touch up so I am curious what you used. What is the the lighter color over most of the ascent stage?

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Dealing with the gold plated areas can be an issue. One can handle this issue in a number of ways. Since this was a review item I built it "as is", and therefore, chose to leave the gold plating intact. One could remove the plating by using any of the products that remove paint from a model, and replace it with an approrpiate gold paint. In the end, I found that I needed to touch up the gold plating in only one area. I managed to mess up the gold plating on one of the legs and used Tamiya Clear Orange, X-26, to touch up the small area where the gold plating had been damaged. It isn't a precise match but it did a passable job of fixing the problem.

 

Speaking of precise color matches, modeling any of the LMs and attempting to get precise and accurate colors will cause one considerable consternation. In short, there is much leeway in what may or may not be an accurate color. Get “Apollo Lunar Module” Space in Miniature # 7” by Michael J. Mackowski. His publication is the single-most important reference for a LM project that is available. You can use NASA images but be aware that even those images will not give you an accurate guide to "color". For example, the lighter areas on the Ascent Stage are described as a "biege with a green tint". Huh? Wha? No FS #s here, folks.

 

I used Tamiya Dark Yellow XF-60 shot over a coat of Tamiya light green. The XF-60 was applied lightly so that just a hint of the undercoating could still be seen.

Anyway....the XF-60 "matches" the color I see in many of the NASA images to a satisfactory level. And my threshold of "satisfactory" is on the low side.

 

In the hands of a more skilled and knowledgeable modeler I am quite sure that this model is a stunner when completed. My model is "ok", but not built to a competitive level, but then that wasn't the goal.

 

High quality Real Space models are few and far between and I'd certainly recommend this kit to the Real Space fan.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks Steve,

I've already found a glitch or two in the paint scheme as I eventually applied it. It is very important to use good references (and even NASA images are not good references when it come to matching the colors....but they are excellent for placement of color separation lines). Using Mike Mackowski's publication on the LMs one rapidly comes to the realization that each of the LMs was unqiue in its color scheme, not to mention other details that distinguish one vehicle from another. And to make matters more interesting for modelers, a slight color shift results from the difference in skin materials using on the LMs.

 

Its a fun model, but it can be a bit of a "research" challenge.

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