As for building the model from scratch, it is not completely complicated as you can see. The body was made of a polystyrene cube wrapped in aluminum foil, rotor mounting, solar cells, legs and leg connectors - from photo-etched and metal elements from other projects. For some details, GreenStuff also came in handy. However, the rotor blades were a challenge - to maintain repeatability, it was not an option to carve them from scratch, and in addition to repeatability, I also had to maintain the opposite profile of the blades of each pair. Finally, I chose a resin rotor blade set for He111 in 1/48, which, after rework, worked quite well in its new role. To reflect the carbon pattern on the blades, I used Tamiya carbon decal for cars in 1/24. The pattern is similar, but its thickness turned out to be a problem - Tamiya's decal fix came in handy for laying on flat surfaces, and I made the edges with the help of Bilmodel's 3. As for painting, there is no need to write about it :) I can only recommend quite successful MIG metallizers - I used 3 different shades for the aluminum housing.

  • Josh_Underhill

    cool subject and interesting story on solutions in the write up. I appreciate the effort you’ve gone to in the basing too (corners of white rocks, jutting up, perhaps uncovered during landing downdraft, perseverance tracks etc.)

  • Melnikov Ivan "Nakatan"

    gold