X-20 Dyna Soar with Transtage 1/48 (3)

Well, one moment you have all the time in the world and next it's like a pandemonium. We're working on the last bits of the documentary film about ANS, the first Dutch satellite, and we both have our daily jobs to do too. So there's little time to glue some paper there days.

Anyway, it did so happen this week I actually made some time and the Dyna Soar is finished.

 
Here's a picture of the finished model, for those who want to see more, just click on where it says "Click here to read the rest of the story!" and voilà.

I will cointinue where I left in the last post on the X-20, I worked on the engines. After two of them, I put them together and made tubes from thin metallic paper. I used a piece of welding wire to bend it all. I first wanted to use paper elbow pieces in the plumbing, but in the end I really couldn't be bothered, this looks a lot better anyway and is much faster.

I used the few obtainable drawings of the Transtagr design I could find on the internets to follow and get the plumbing right. It looks busy and genuine anyway, so I do not think anyone will notice distinctive mistakes in the construction. I like how it turned out.  Next up was gettin gthe engines stacked into the Transtage. This was done by a kind of trusswork, that placed the engines inbetween the two fuel tanks. From the pointy ends of the pressurized tanks, the combustible (hypergolic) components were pushed into the fuel lines to the engines where they mixed and directly ignited. Simple and efficient. (But immensely toxic.) I used CA to get the flimsy scaffolding in place and quickly cured with the engines attached. Once set, it was very sturdy and the Transtage could easily stand upright on its own engines.

Next, I finally could close up the Transtage and the spacecraft adapter and glue them together. In the forward facing part of the adapter I put a strong magnet, and in the X-20 was another one. So they still are detachable but also held together very tightly by the magnets.

And finally some more photos of the stack together. Up next might be another part of the what-if I was planning around this model. But you never know. It might be something different as well.

Furthermore, we're close to getting the film out off the edit room into the big world. So there are some very special moments and days coming up. The première of the movie is planned in early January but there's enough to do in the time leading up to that moment... We'll see. Hopefully I will be back soon.

Stay safe and be kind to one another.

--PK