Another Thunderbird is GO!

Building a Thunderbird 3 model with lights

My friend Dan, as before with TB1, hired me to build two more models for him before his visit which I talked about in the previous post. Thunderbird 3 was the first of the two. The kit was built stock except for the engine lighting which was added.

Remember to click on the pictures for a larger view.

Built from the AIP/Aoshima kit, lights were installed in the engines using “candle flicker” warm white LEDs. The rear end of the model was modified to contain the AAA batteries and magnets were used for the hatch.

A switch was placed in the docking ring and the nosecone similarly held in place using a magnet.

The moon base stand that came with the model had to be modified to support the weight of batteries on the tail.

Although well engineered, two operations were difficult on this kit: First, The black stripes on the front “wings” which, although separate parts to ease painting, are fragile and you must be careful to remove paint from the mating surfaces or they’ll break easily due to added thickness. The other difficulty was putting the long blue stripes in between the gray fins. A lot of trimming and prodding was needed to get those to seat correctly and evenly spaced. I ended up splitting the “U” shaped decals into two halves and applying each side separately.

The model was only lightly weathered to appear similar to how the largest of the studio models looked on its launch pad which looked relatively new and clean. The smaller models seen flying in the show were actually pretty filthy but also looked too obviously like scorched models, so that excess weathering was avoided.

Coming up: Thunderbird 4!