James Duffy
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2009
- Messages
- 1,445
- Reaction score
- 1,733
Thought you guys might get a kick out of this...
Last summer my daughter, Campbell, qualified to represent the US as a member of the Junior team at the upcoming World Spacemodeling Championships. She spent several months building an Estes 1/100 Saturn V kit for the qualification event, and I shared video of the event at that time. For those of you who missed it, here's a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mCfsQYqkMs
After she qualified for the team we discussed her options for the model she would fly at the World Championships, and I pulled down off of the shelf various tooling and jigs I created years ago for a 1/24 scale Little Joe model that was never completed. Campbell has always been intrigued when I made resin parts for my own models, so the thought of casting her own parts appealed to her. I showed her how to mix resin and pour parts, and the results turned out pretty nicely. So, we pressed on and I introduced her to vacuforming, again, yielding some pretty respectable parts. This process repeated itself over the span of over half a year, and included escape tower construction, fiberglass airframe manufacture, mold creation from new master parts, sanding, masking, airbrushing, and more. Tonight we reached a bit of a milestone as she sprayed the last bit of paint on the fins, then stacked all of the parts for the first time. Yet to come is the attachment of some minor detail parts, parachutes, and dry-transfer decals. Owing to the delicate nature of the dry transfers Campbell will not add those until we arrive at the contest site in late August.
She did all of the work on this model herself, though admittedly with a reasonably competent scale modeler looking over her shoulder the entire time. We estimate that we've shared a total of about 300 hours on this project, and had a blast the entire time. During the process we created additional parts that were shared with the other members of the Junior team, and all three young women representing the US in the Scale event will be flying similar Little Joe models. (At least one of the other dads is a member of this forum, so hopefully he'll share the great work his daughter did on her model.)
Next will be Scale turn-in day on September 1, and scale flight day will be September 8.
James
Last summer my daughter, Campbell, qualified to represent the US as a member of the Junior team at the upcoming World Spacemodeling Championships. She spent several months building an Estes 1/100 Saturn V kit for the qualification event, and I shared video of the event at that time. For those of you who missed it, here's a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mCfsQYqkMs
After she qualified for the team we discussed her options for the model she would fly at the World Championships, and I pulled down off of the shelf various tooling and jigs I created years ago for a 1/24 scale Little Joe model that was never completed. Campbell has always been intrigued when I made resin parts for my own models, so the thought of casting her own parts appealed to her. I showed her how to mix resin and pour parts, and the results turned out pretty nicely. So, we pressed on and I introduced her to vacuforming, again, yielding some pretty respectable parts. This process repeated itself over the span of over half a year, and included escape tower construction, fiberglass airframe manufacture, mold creation from new master parts, sanding, masking, airbrushing, and more. Tonight we reached a bit of a milestone as she sprayed the last bit of paint on the fins, then stacked all of the parts for the first time. Yet to come is the attachment of some minor detail parts, parachutes, and dry-transfer decals. Owing to the delicate nature of the dry transfers Campbell will not add those until we arrive at the contest site in late August.
She did all of the work on this model herself, though admittedly with a reasonably competent scale modeler looking over her shoulder the entire time. We estimate that we've shared a total of about 300 hours on this project, and had a blast the entire time. During the process we created additional parts that were shared with the other members of the Junior team, and all three young women representing the US in the Scale event will be flying similar Little Joe models. (At least one of the other dads is a member of this forum, so hopefully he'll share the great work his daughter did on her model.)
Next will be Scale turn-in day on September 1, and scale flight day will be September 8.
James
