Do we really need another BSG Shuttle GAL 356?

[Troy Downen]

The humidity level continues at record levels. I understand that there’s a storm over Louisiana that’s forcing areas to the north and east to be unusually humid. I can feel it! But despite that, I did get to spend a bit more time with GAL 356 this morning.

Up first, the engines. I bored out holes to run wires for the lights into the main body of the shuttle.



I also don’t trust glue to be the only thing to hang onto the engines and nacelles, so I coated them liberally with 5-minute epoxy and then mechanically fastened them with a #2 screw.



I stared long and hard at the engine bells (or engine nozzles?) to figure out how to connect them to the nacelles (I told you that I spend a lot of time just staring at my models as I build them!). The aft end of the engine bells will touch the aft end of the engine nacelles, but I’m afraid that glue marks may show if that’s the attach point (I can be rather sloppy with glue). I decided instead to attach the bells to a short length of PVC pipe that would then sit down inside the nacelles and attach to the back wall near the shuttle body. A bit confusing… see the photo below. Hopefully this will allow me to be as sloppy with the glue as I want to be, but hide all of the glue joints when I’m done. Go ahead and skip to the end of the build and see if it worked.  Did it?



The shuttle’s flight deck (cockpit) floor was not a great fit to the shuttle side walls and upper roof, so I smeared as much epoxy into the joint as possible and then came back with lines of epoxy putty to smear along the joint for added strength. This will also help (a little bit) with preventing light leaks from the flight deck down into the rest of the shuttle body.



Note that hole in the back deck wall. That’s for the forward-most 3/8” pipe in the armature to run into the flight deck and on out the front attach point at the nose.