Muroc's X-36

 This kit has to be one of the oldest I won. I bought it at one of the first IPMS  Nationals that I went to.  Muroc Models is based in the Mojave Desert and produces resin kits and decals for display models. Many products cover experimental aircraft from the area.

From a website: 

 The X-36 is a 28-percent scale representation of a theoretical advanced fighter aircraft configuration. The Boeing Phantom Works (formerly McDonnell-Douglas) in St. Louis, MO, built the X-36, in a cooperative agreement with NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA. It was designed to fly without the traditional tail surfaces common on most aircraft. Instead, a canard forward of the wing is utilized, in addition to split ailerons and an advanced thrust-vectoring nozzle for directional control. The X-36 is unstable in both the pitch and yaw axes; therefore, an advanced, single-channel digital fly-by-wire control system, developed with some commercially available components, stabilizes the aircraft.

 The kit was very well done, albeit very delicate. 

 

HA. Just noticed that the image on the box matches the size of the kit. Here it is with the landing gear installed. They wont on effortlessly, but again are delicate. I accidentally snapped the front wheel off without even noticing. Thankfully it didn't roll away and went back on easily.

 

The paint is one, but I had to be very careful not to make it too thick to fill in the panel lines.

 

The panel lines are very well done, but oddly there were not lines to indicate the bottom of the cockpit "window."  There is a little pitot tube attached to the instruction page with tape. But it was so small, I didn't see it until way after the fact. Here I attached one with the thinnest stretched sprue I think I ever done. ;)

 

The decals are on. I did have a little trouble at the start. With their age, I wasn't sure if they would shatter on the kit or not, so I tried two X-36 markings on the bottom. I didn't know until I started sliding the decal that apparently each letter/number was separate. I recovered the "X" and the hyphen, but the 3 got turned in reverse, and when I tried to flip it, it went into a ball that I couldn't undo. It would look dumb just to have the one, so the bottom has not decals. Then could the X-36 with the symbols on the top? I circumvented finding out by putting a coat of decal film over the line. They easily slid off in one piece.

Just about done. The pitot tube is so delicate that I decided I want to glue the craft down to some sort of vignette, hopefully protecting it. I found the image below and decided that was the image to duplicate. Looking through the offering I couldn't find any sort of 1/72 civilians to what I came up with (on Amazon) was 200 architectural figures for less than $10. I'll try to pick out 3 and finish off the scene. But that's next time. Thanks for looking.

The inspiration