"Cold hearted orb that rules the night, removes the colours from our sight,

red is gray and yellow white, but we decide which is right and which is an illusion."

Nights in White Satin - The Moody Blues

As 2019 saw the 50^th anniversary of the first moon landing, I thought what better way to round the old year off.

I will not write about the technicalities of the space program(s), primarily because it is not my main interest and am therfore not qualified on the subject. Still, It did'nt stop me taking-on Dragons 1:72 Saturn V Apollo 11 offering, and what a rough flight I was in for.

Gullible? ... maybe, but not gullible enough to believe in all those 'lunatic'conspiracy theorist tricksters. The problems started on opening the box to find warpage in almost every main part. This as you can see called for some drastic measures with plastic cement, heavy clamps and a soldering iron.

The next hurdle was the cleaning and dry fitting of all parts which were rather messy and malaliged. The worst kick in the crutch was the so-called instruction sheets. This only served to confuse the issue by pointing out vaguely where the external parts were to be attached. To cap this, no measurements were given for the black and white roll patterns or the decals. As you can imagine the trawling of the internet brought even more confusion as there are different patterns/versions of the Saturn V.

All this 'belief' has to be marked out and reassesed beforehand as one error will throw you out of line with all the other details and markings. You may notice that I found a use after all for the instructions … far more hygienic than the obvious 😉

For a novice 'space cadet' such as myself it was a helluva job to put up and not one I'd like to repeat.

I went for a OOB build here - thank my lucky stars, but if your thinking about making an exact Dragon model of the most powerfull rocket known to man, maybe you'd like to consider THIS first. An expert in the field will undoubtably see flaws. For my part I've gone for 'tidy' with this one, not to mention a litte guesswork - without sending myself into orbit.

The photography was also a trial as the whole thing is 1.5m high and precariously balanced stage upon stage. Hence the eyesore scratchmarks on the inside of the fuel tanks rims.

The title, well I reckon thats the stuff that Dragon Models must have been quaffing when they made this particular bucket of ... er … donkey bagels.

So, it's time to raise a glass of champagne to that small step in black and white that brought us all that bit closer together down on earth.

Cheers then & HAPPY NEW YEAR

'Catch you on the flip side' ...

31.12.'19