Ariane 5 1/96, pt. 17 - the EAPs [part 3]

...Almost there? Well, think again.

Yes, I tore both the boosters into pieces. Reasons and story after the jump.

Not a pretty sight, but it was necessary. It wasn't good enough, although it looked nice.

What happened?
Well, from the beginning on already I wasn't happy with the seams. They were quite prominent even though they faced toward the core stage and were hardly visible at a glance. They were there and, what's more, I realised they could have been covered. Almost completely. The cable ducts run all over the tube so perfect for covering the seam. Only the nose cone would have had a seam. And lots of it would have been hidden from view because of the attachment point to the core. Next I realised I made a mistake in where I actually placed the ducts on the boosters. Wrong. Not accurate. Just wrong. Not visible to the layman perhaps, but very visible to the people who know. Not good. With the already added amount of detailed pieces and parts I just couldn't let this be.

So that was that. I only had to do the thrust vectoring bottle on the second EAP and I realised that this wasn't up to the standard I wanted the rocket to be. I salvaged the nose cones, the engine bells and the inner tubes. The rest was ripped and shredded.
I started work on a more detailed and better version of the EAPs. I changed the position of the seam and added the new engine parts to the sheet. Perhaps original creator Ton Noteboom is kind enough to let me publish them on the Papermodelers Forum.

For now it's literally back to the drawing board. I will have the new version ready to be cut and glued early next week. The build won't take that long now.
In the end it will look better. I know.

--PK