Re: BUILD THREAD: My Apollo A7L Space Suit
I attached the connectors and the arms. The connectors were a pain to install. I have to remember to sew the holes in the front panel before I incorporate it into the suit, because trying to sew anything onto the entire suit now is difficult because the garment is huge and bulky to fit in the sewing machine. It's much easier to work with subassemblies and sew the whole thing together at the end.
I'm still tweaking the inner structure a bit. I also need to prop the helmet ring up into the correct orientation. The real suit had steel cables pulling the shoulder joints in. I used elastic to simulate this. Otherwise the sleeves sag down. If you look at photographs of astronauts wearing the A7L suit, the glove rings sit pretty high up on the wrist. If I didn't put the elastic cables in, the rings would fall all the way down to my hands.
This is my "B" suit. The "A" suit has my last name on it. I used the old 3D printed connectors on this suit and the Spaceworks connectors on the other one. They're a little bit undersized, but only a few millimeters, so it's barely noticeable to anyone but me probably. The old connectors still look pretty great.
Things I hope to finish before the SoCal Prop Party:
• Make the boots
• Sew the liner and install the connector cable for the CCA
• Fabricate the matrix pins that go inside the electrical connector (I've been procrastinating with this one)
• Install the LEM tether hooks
• Slightly age and weather the entire suit (I'm going to slightly weather the suit. Not so it looks really old and beat up, but just slightly to make it look like a real piece of hardware).
Stuff I plan to do AFTER the prop party:
• Install a ventilation system for the suit and helmet
• Build a portable AC unit
• Make a more accurately shaped bubble helmet
• Fabricate the extravehicular components (this is a BIG one).
