This might have to be one of my most challenging models I ever done. This is my 1/144 scale Revell space shuttle Atlantis. Why Atlantis? Because she is like the redheaded stepchild of the shuttles. She gets no respect. Everybody does Columbia because she was the first and because of her destruction, Challenger for the same reason, Discovery because she is the most used and popular, and Endeavour because she is the newest and has a cool name. Build wise, she was built mostly from the box except for the main engines and a trapezoid shaped obtrusion just underneath the OMS pods. The engines came from Meteor Productions. I also bought Real Space Models main engines but they were way too big.

The decals are a whole different story. They include four different sources. The tile patterns came from Meteor. Most of the others came from the kit (this was the revised Revell kit) or from Real Space Models. The RSM decals had the windows with the black tile in the middle but the windows were not right. I cut the tile part off and fit them to the windows that came with the kit. I also used a shuttle paint mask for the windows. It came with masking for painting the entire shuttle but since I had the tile decals, I did not see the need in using the mask. For the tank, I sanded off the raised lines, then used an textured paint to simulated the foam. I painted over that with an orange color. I used the tank decals from the Minicraft kit to show the dash marks that run down the length of the tank next to the fuel lines. The colors are not exactly right, especially the mustard colored part, but I like it. I used the bottom nozzle parts of the SRB’s from the Minicraft kit for my boosters as well.

Image: Side view

Image: Different angle