This is just a quick update before I jump back to the Millennium Falcon. I was preparing to attach the fuel tank portion of the first stage to the thrust structure. As I’ve seen before when I did the SA-205 Apollo 7 Saturn IB model, the tanks don’t exactly line up well with the thrust structure. There is quite a step out nearly all the way around the stage that requires a considerable amount of clean up to get a proper looking stage. While I was messing around with it trying to get the best possible alignment, I noticed that if I rotated the tank portion a bit in one direction most of the tanks lined up much better. The only problem was that it wouldn’t stay that way and it also tended to try and pop the tank section open at the seam.
I decided to try and remove part of the alignment guides that are on the thrust structure, hoping that would allow me to slightly rotate the tanks into a better position. That seemed to work pretty good. The tanks are now attached and are just awaiting some sanding, carving and filling to make them look good. But since the tanks line up better it will be a much simpler job that it would otherwise have been. There is still one of the tanks that will require a lot of work, but it is just one tank and not almost all of them which would be the case otherwise.
I only highlight one of the guides in the pictures above but there are four of them around the thrust structure and they were all trimmed the same way.
That is it for now. I’ll set this aside for a while I tackle the decals on the Millennium Falcon.
Thanks for looking.
Luhman-ations 