I had always been disappointed with the Aurora astronaut and thought the Revell Ed White was a good solution.
By combining the backpack and chest-pack from the Aurora kit and Astronaut from the Revell kit, I was thrilled to find they could fit together.
A good "proof of concept" for my gold visor technique, some surgery on hands and suit details, I was ready to jumped in.
Gemini 9A was to have Gene Cernan test fly the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit, AMU. The unit was stored in the service module part of the space craft and required Cernan to leave the capsule, work his way around back and strap on the unit.
Tested on earth, everything seemed fine but in orbit, the effort required to get to the back had Gene's heart rate off the scale and his visor fogged up so he could not see. He was ordered back in the cockpit without completing the test mission. After reading several books on Cernan, I knew how disappointed he was and decided to help out.
The biggest surgeries were re-creating fingers, metallic leg coverings, suit details and gold and clear visors.
All the various suit hoses were done using different diameters of lead wire. All the new belts and straps were done with yogurt foil with the stitching done with my rivet wheel.
Helmet ring and wrist rings were done with my go-to furnace tape, the right colored with tamiya clear red. The gold visor attachment is wrong, had I done better research before hand, I would have done it correctly, but it's staying as is.
In this scale, 1/10th, I found there was no cheating or short-cuts allowed. This made for a lot of work and I almost burned out with AMS. As it is, I could have done more detailing, such as lettering on the AMU but I'm done.
Without realizing it, I guess I've created another Aurora box-top homage. And, as so often happens, as I'm looking at this post, I realized I forgot an important, obvious detail on the astronaut. I will hoist a glass of my favorite adult beverage in your honor if you can spot it too.
Thanks for reading this far, enjoy.
