MER-A Spirit - second part: Troy 1/40 [3]

And on we go. The solar wings were mated with the rest of the body. At the back of the solar panel surface I placed the high and low gain antenna. The high gain dish was made from red sandpaper. It now looks like a lot of dust is caket on to the dish's surface. Also, it was time to give Spirit her eyes. Apart from the original parts I also used very small beads to make the lenses on the camhead. In the end I gave them all a dab of clear gloss paint to make lenses, although in reality the dust might have made them dull by now.

As usual, there's more after the jump.

Spirit's eyes. The 'cable' is made from sewing thread. (The accidental hair has been removed. Cats...)

High and low gain antennas.

Next were the wheels and their rocker-bogie construction. This enables the rover to climb rugged terrain without a lot of problems.
As said, I wanted to keep some movement in the suspension and so it took some more work to get the rear parts moveable in this scale. Luckily I had some experience with the construction of Curiosity some time back.

I used parts of pins to make the axle. The front part is glued and stiffened with CA glue.

A finished rocker bogie. The wheels were completely made of sandpaper.

At the pivoting point I glued a small brass ring that could be attached to the main axle.

In the meantime, the cam mast got its wire, too. It is a tiny paper strip 
and can bend freely while the mast rotates. It makes a full 360º.

Well, that's it for now. More on the progress on the diorama part in the next post.
Thanks for watching!
-PK