Mercury-Redstone Escape Tower
Sometimes, you get a model that is just about perfect, and you love the whole thing. Except for one thing. And you dislike that one thing. Sometimes that one thing can also be called 'The whole model,' but often it is a small part that was either simplified or deleted. Model designers often do this because the part would either be very difficult to work with or is too small to be made, the latter tending toward styrene injection models. Very fine mesh grating usually doesn't come with holes in it, and complex parts are often represented by a simplified version.
Normally these little details are easy to over look and the general apperance of the model looks great. But sometimes these simplifications are just a little too much for you. This was the case for the awesome Mercury-Redston at The Philippus Lansbergen Public Observatory Foundation website. The rocket and capsule are great. Nice details, easy construction, and great instructions. The escape tower was pretty basic, but for good reason. At this scale, the paper would have to be cut into very thin peices which would break easily. To make things easy for the non-experienced modeler, the tower was simplifed to an easy to build design. I didn't like the look, so I improvised.
Note: The Mercury model isn't available anymore. The creator decided to take them off their old website and is considering where to host them. Once I know more, I'll update this.
The website Card in Space has a 1/48 scale Mercury-Redstone that had a nice and detailed escape tower. I scaled that down to 1/96 and printed it on red cardstock. You can see the results are quite nice. After all that, I decided to keep the file for later use on a Mercury-Atlas rocket.
Launch Stand
I also wanted to put the rocket on something a little more attractive than, well, nothing. The design of the rocket lets you just set it on a flat surface, but that is a little plain for me. I saw a stand at Vadasz Paper Rockets website for a 1/48 scale Redstone MRBM rocket.
I initially just tried to scale down the file to make it 1/96, but the construction method wasn't the best due to the small parts. So I did a little redesign and used that to make my stand. It worked great. I don't have instructions for it yet, but I'll have those up after I build another one. That should be soon since I'm going to be making a Juno I soon.
Download
So, now you want these great add-ons too? Well, you are in luck. I put them together on to one pdf file for you. I recomend printing this on regular white paper and glueing the appropriate peices onto card stock. I'll have more info in the instructions, but for now you'll just have to guess. Sorry, but I should have instructions available in a bit.
Mercury-Redstone Escape Tower and Launch Stand.
Please note that the second page is desinged to be printed on red cardstock so you don't have to fold over and glue the paper to itself. It makes for a cleaner look and the thicker paper is a little easier to work with.