Flight makes the imagination Limitless...

Hallmark Friendship 7 Mercury Capsule


Here is a photo of an original capsule and one that was touched up a little.

First you should remove the little cone on top of the capsule. This Antenna fairing cover was attached to the escape tower and should not be represented in this model. Gently saw it off as shown in the following photo. Don’t remove the little screw in there yet.

You must remove one of the retro rockets. Gently break off the top one or the one closest to the ‘1997’ inscription. With a little work, it will come off. You can see where the one above was scratched a little. If you plan on re-painting them, don’t worry about it. Otherwise, be careful and if you need to use pliers, use a rag also.

Remove the screw under the retro rocket you just removed. This will allow removal of the heat shield exposing the electronics. You can see in the photo that its attached with some wires to the speaker so don’t pull it very far out.

Remove the two screws holding the rear bulkhead to the capsule exterior as seen in the photo above. Now remove the little screw down in the antenna fairing. The cockpit should slide out. The aft bulkhead may have a little glue on it so you may need to gently pry it until it breaks loose.

If you plan on removing the electronics, there are two screws holding the circuit board to the aft bulkhead. The instrument panel will come loose. Be careful as there are little wires going up to the button and instrument panel light.

Here is a photo of where you should be now. Just be careful with the wiring if you plan on it working again.



The astronaut is mounted on three little plastic pins. It should come out with a little prying. Work a small screwdriver down behind his shoulders and he’ll pop out.

The window/hatch was originally glued in and will come out with a little gentle prying. Sometimes it falls out when you disassemble the capsule. 

Here is a close-up photo of the panel. It’s not very scale but it looks cool. For the scale buffs, the periscope and three flight instruments above it are recognizable. The four instruments (the lower one is actually a camera) and the two switches to the left of the periscope are almost right. The rest is pretty much made up. 

Well there you go. It goes back together real easy. You can use a small piece of card stock to make a cover for the hole on the antenna canister. You can see it in the first photo. The recovery compartment is actually too small in diameter to be scale. The model is about 1/25 scale and the recovery compartment works out to be about 1/32 scale. You can sand off the aerodynamic wedge or build up the recovery compartment to the wedge's diameter. A piece of rolled card stock could be used around the wedge diameter. This makes it really close to the right size but you loose a little of the detail on the recovery section. The painted model in the first photo shows the wedge was sanded off for simplicity. You could detail this model as much as you like. However a simple spraying of flat black and a painting the suit silver makes a lot of difference. So break out the extra ornament and get to work!

Here is the astronaut as he was removed. Some helmet detail and a visor would make it look much better but at least the suit needs to be silver.