Happy Medium Press

Real Space Modeller, Vol. 1

Edited by  Michael G. Reccia

Reviewed By  Ben Guenther, IPMS #20101

MSRP: £13.95 (about $23.00 at the time of writing) ISBN: 978-0-9558781-7-6 Soft cover, 7.75 x 10.5", 100 pgs, 254 color pictures Published date: July 2009 Review copy courtesy of Happy Medium Press Website: www.scififantasymodeller.co.uk Whether you are a real space newbie or a hardened accuracy buff, you will find something of interest for you in this publication. Happy Medium Press (that also publishes Sci-fi Fantasy Modeller) decided that, with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this was an appropriate time to publish a series of articles on real space modelling (British spelling). Most of the eleven articles deal with the Apollo missions, but intermixed with these are several articles on the X-15A, Shuttle and proposed vehicles that never flew. Also, interestingly enough, there are two articles on how models were made and used in films. Of the first 6 articles, four deal with making space models out of the box and the trials and troubles with putting the models together and painting them. One article deals with making a 1/18 scale LEM for the movie "Moonshot" in two weeks. I really liked the other article on the movie "The Right Stuff", where the visual effect expert Gary Gutierrez did not want to use a lot of motion control technology to film the X-1A and NF-104 in flight. Rather, he preferred to use creative methods. For example, he says "the first thing I tried was on the third story of this building and I had … a dozen crew guys down there holding a parachute to catch the model … I took our $6000, six-foot X-1A model and, holding it with my hand out the window, I dropped it, and it kind of flew and they caught it." Gutierrez had a cameraman standing directly below, next to the parachute, filming the falling X-1A with the sky as a backdrop. They loved the shots in the dailies. He described another time when "we made a crossbow catapult with surgical tubing so that we could basically launch a Revell model kit of the NF-104. We must have bought 50 or 60 NF-104 model kits." Antidotes like these really make the article fun and interesting to read. The remaining five articles by some very talented modelers include a lot of conversion and detailing using scratch building techniques. Pete Malaguti could have really expanded on his article on how he detailed the Apollo12, 15, and 16 LEM's, but his work of the 1/24 scale Gemini 9A capsule was fantastic and his 1/48 scale LEM cutaway model has to be seen to see how great it is. This is a high quality production with excellent photos and a great mix of articles. I hope more contributors will step forth so that we may see Volume 2 published. While the cost is high, I can easily recommend this publication to anyone interested in real space modeling. I would like to thank IPMS/USA and Happy Medium Press for the opportunity to review this product.