Mercury Atlas from Horizon Models

This video shows the complete process of my construction of the 1/72 scale Mercury Atlas rocket and capsule from Horizon Models. It's a straightforward out-of-the-box build so I strung all the segments into this one long (25 minute) video.

[@jonjon2663]

Nice build, turned out great, and thanks so much for posting this vid, it has helped me alot with my build. You did a much better job on the escape tower than I could manage haha!

[@dizdizzy8937]

Thank you for sharing. Looking good Michael!

[@scottoates8702]

Timely, Mike! I'm building a pair of them right now - one for the boilerplate and the other for the manned capsule. The long seam was a challenge for me too - some of the "panel lines" need to be rescribed to improve the alignment of the two halves. I used sprue goo and Mr. Surfacer to replace and fill where necessary . . . had to prime, scribe, fill again, prime, and scribe on a couple of sections. Cleaned the errant scribe marks off with thin super glue. Not perfect, but one has to take the eye of the IPMS judge to find the imperfect. The plumbing and decals also do a nice job also covering up some of the seam work. Using Mission Models paints which are going down very nicely (once I became comfortable with their "system.") I have the Horizon Redstone up next - will be much more cautious about joining the two halves of the tube this time to prevent as much seam work as the Atlas. And, nice job on the escape tower! It has been a challenge to keep the stucture in alignment to the pointed tip. The slightest of angle betrays itself!

[@ecoriskprojects9783]

I really like the build. I have now built the Mercury-Atlas and the ICBM versions of the kit. I wish that I have thought of putting the weights at the bottom to make it more stable. Now I need one more to do either sigma 7 (Essentially a perfect flight) and then Faith 7-Cooper's long duration flight with a hand flown retro firing and decent. Instead of using the wrap around decals I simply painted the stripes across the pipeline by hand. Good to have you online and I really appreciate your reference materials.

[@philipgoldsby74]

Great work, Mike. Thanks for showing us your process.

[@tintobrass532]

Incredible work…excellent discipline…

[@portland-182]

Great work. Fantastic result.

[@maxsmodels]

Beautiful. I have one in the stash.

[@michaelscheel9533]

I built a 48th scale mercury spacecraft. But i wasn't sure if I wanted to try a 72nd (my preferred scale) one has I thought it might be too small but this video changed my mind,

[@billreese4584]

I had the Gloss Black do the same thing. rattled the can for about 5 minutes, but still looks like the paint was mixed wrong.

[@pcj3405]

Cool!

[@JamesWalck]

Very nice build summary. Thank you for posting. Question: What adhesive / glue did you use to attach the painted retro package to the painted heat shield.....black CA, clear CA, krystal clear ??

[@spacecitymike]

@@JamesWalck Frankly I don’t remember. Probably Testors cement wit,h the needle applicator.

[@securityrobot]

A very disappointing result, this kit would have benefited greatly from a finish using bare metal foil - instead of trying to use paints for every metallic look.