Saturday, August 20, 2016

Enerjet News, Mercury Little Joe I, Finished

Look above the orange stripe and you'll see a raised bubble on the card stock wrap.
When setting the orange decal some water got under the edge of the card stock wrap. You'd think the paint would have sealed the edge.
Luckily it flattened out when the water dried. I did roll the raised area down with a Sharpie barrel as it dried.

The placement of the vertical decal and vertical orange blocks were a compromise. This plan had a longer than scale body tube for stability and room for a parachute.
The Booster is finished except for some Odd'l parachutes. The booster will get a 15" chute, the capsule and tower a 12".

All things considered, this is a good representation of the Little Joe. The later Little Joe test vehicles had the black capsule but not the orange bars on either side of the UNITED STATES markings. I know it's incorrect but I built the model as described in the Enerjet News plans. I did a little extra work on the decals and trim. My UNITED STATES decal is longer than the Enerjet News showed.

With the Mercury Capsule on: 


With the success of the recent Estes scale model releases, I wouldn't be surprised if Estes came out with a MR Little Joe I using the 2" diameter Centuri capsule and tower.

5 comments:

  1. Since I have a Dr Zooch Mercury almost finished trying to decide if the Estes kit will end up as raw material for a Little Joe...

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    1. I'be built both of them. In some ways I like the Zooch Little Joe better. It's a smaller size with a dowel tower. But, you already know that!
      If you haven't built the Estes Mercury Redstone yet, it's an impressive model and does pretty well with C6-3 engines.

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  2. Chris this looks absolutely beautiful! If it ever cools down I'd like to try building this one. Would you be willing to share the decal files?

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    1. Sure Eddie,
      But the water slide decals are small, only the stenciled UNITED STATES and the clamp lines below the top of the body tube. The orange is spray paint on a white decal sheet shown in an earlier post. Let me know when you need it.

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