STS-61A: Challenger's last full flight

 
I haven’t built in 1/400 in a long time. For more reasons than one. The main reason was I thought it had become too small for my eyes to handle. But I still had some unfinished business in that scale. My plan was to build all shuttles in 1/400, each on a milestone mission. I did Enterprise (ALT), Columbia (STS-1), Atlantis (First docking to Mir) and Endeavour (its last ISS mission with most spacecraft attached to the station).
But I still had to do at least two more. I wanted to show Discovery, the workhorse of the fleet, while deploying the Hubble Space Telescope. And Challenger. Which will be this build.

When Challenger lifted off from LC39A the 30th October of 1985, it was another milestone in the Shuttle program in many ways. With eight people on board, it was the largest ever crew launched in a single spacecraft. It also was the launch of the first Dutch astronaut, Wubbo Ockels. And it was the last time Shuttle Challenger made a full flight from launch to wheel stop, at Edwards AFB on November 6. On the next occasion, 26 February 1986 and well, we all know what happened, I don’t have to elaborate on that…
More story and many more photos after the jump:

For long, I had this plan to show Challenger during ascent, preferably at booster separation. But aside from all the drawings I still puzzled on how to actually do that in a way without too much clutter around the separating stack parts. And then I got this idea. Thin wires through the ET to the SRB’s camouflaged with fluff to imitate the separation rocket plumes, and suspend the stack from the booster plumes with rods of some kind inside the SRB’s to the base plate. Like this:

Now what to use?
I experimented with some metal wire I had, but it was too thick for my liking. I had some used mandolin strings that were looking ideal but they were just too thin and flexible. While there was a heatwave going on, I cycled to the model hobby shop in town and bought some steel spring wire. Very thin but sturdy.

So, this will be the first time in actually years that I will build in 1/400. But against my expectations, it was easy. I could see what I was doing, the parts were cut out with precision and I again was amazed by the great fit of the shuttle parts in 1/400.
Of course I used AXM’s model of Challenger with a very slight mod to the ET to make it a little darker to better resemble STS-61A’s tank. Alfonso’s shuttle model is so good. It still is very doable at 36% of its actual scale.

 

The shuttle was an utter joy to build. I left out some parts because edge glueing was enough to keep it all together. The cockpit part was slightly sanded on the edges to get a thinner edge. In this scale, paper thickness can be a nuisance but again, the fit is almost perfect. And the almost might just be because of my slightly ageing eye-hand coordination.
In the end I held a very pretty tiny Challenger in my hand.

The ET. Quite an uneventful build. I recoloured the skin to a little darker colour to better mimic the actual ET of STS 61A. I left out the triangular glue tabs here for the ogive part. Just edge glueing and an occasional small 80 gram glue strip inside. The ET’s innards have a strip of rolled up piece of 80 gram regular printing paper and inside of that, three cardboard rings with a hole in the middle.
At the intertank SRB attachment points I made tiny holes. on the bottom of the central cylinder I cut out two notches where the SRB’s attach.
Here the ‘magic’ has to happen. I left the bottom cap off of the constructed ET to be able to fiddle with the wire later on.

The diorama setup is like this:
At first I wanted to try and ‘suspend’ the whole stack on the SRB’s. With one piece of bent wire going from the base plate through both the SRB’s and the ET. But it would be quite tricky to build the parts around that wire. Maybe I should try that later on a less intricate model. I settled for this:
Two transparent perspex rods, slightly bent in a curve. (a Tajine top did the trick to get two equally curved rods!) 

They will be inserted into the SRB engine nozzles., camouflaged by fiberfill fluffiness. The ET will house two pieces of wire, one at the top and one at the bottom, providing the sturdier bit in the construction. These wires then will be connected to the separation motor locations on the SRB’s with some CA glue. And again camouflaged with some fiberfill to imitate the exhaust plumes of the separation rockets.

Now, the SRB’s. Second time I made them this size. In the STS-1 setup I detailed the boosters around the outside with thinly cut paper strips, so I did the same again. I used my remodeled version of AXM’s boosters; Mine have the seam disappearing underneath the cable run over the fuselage. I reinforced the inside with a sturdy rolled-up piece of card, in which the transparent rod had a snug fit. I capped the inner tube off inside to make sure both SRB’s would be equally high up.

The base plate. A slightly large one because I needed some space for the curved trajectory. First I thought I would use a photo of the Florida Space Coast but I wanted to do something a little more creative, I guess. I used paint with birdcage sand, fiberfill for clouds and some paper to create this suggestion of the Space Coast with a little more depth in the landscape. It isn’t 100% realistic but I like it for now. I can always change it to something else. Two 3.2 mm holes were drilled in the edge of the base plate ( a photo frame). Convenient, because the perspex rods have the same cross section.

When placed on the rods, the wire protruding from the ET needed a little trimming.  With some fluffy fiberfill around it, it immediately was hardly noticeable. I coloured some fiberfill with yellow fluid paint (We call it 'ecoline' in The Netherlands, but that might be a brand name, I don't know). The fibery stuff was glued to the rods with a little drop of CA here and there.  Some japanese art paper with big fibres was used for flames of the extinguishing boosters. A little bunt umber gave the flames and the smoky bits some depth.

And so, after some modelling of the fiberfill fluff, there it was. Challenger separating from its boosters, on her way to orbit with Wubbo Ockels on board.

 

 

I loved working in 1/400 again, next one might be small as well!

See you soon,
—PK