The 1:144 Convair KingFish

 This latest kit is another to add to my prototypes/experimental/ or never was planes. It's the Convair KingFish in 1:144 scale from Fantastic Plastic. The kit comes in 29 resin parts, and is patterned and cast by Anigrand Craftwork[1]. Good to see they they are sort of still in business.

In 1957 there was a contest to replace the U2 spy plane. The contest came down to Convair's KingFish and Lockheed's A-12, which would eventually became the SR-71. Giving this little piece of the story away, you know how it ends up.  Work on the KingFish continued for a few more months, but when the money ran out, the project was cancelled. 

With no real cockpit, the work started with the two engine nozzles that were embedded in the fuselage. Since they will be buried deep in there, I got out the silver paint right away.

Next there was a "spacer" mid-fuselage that I had never seen on an Anigrand kit before. It fit in there perfectly, and yet still left enough room for me to add some "Liquid Gravity" on each side as close to the cockpit as I could get.  Nothing was mentioned in the instructions about adding weight, but anytime I do not have a wheel in the tail, I add weights. 

*A is that spacer.

 Then came what seems to be the typical Anigrand landing gear. The cockpit had a lot of room and only one  tiny seat. I would have thought The cockpit windows were small as well, but no, it was wide open. So I did the best I could to add instruments with paint. Oh well. Looking back I should have added more to make it look "busier."

 

The paint scheme is an overall black. But black leaves me no where to go if I wanted to add some shadows, so out came V's Black Gray. Having a second thought that the jet was never completed, so it never did anything to get weathered. The decision was that except for a few chips (because I couldn't resist) I left it alone.  The decals went over the dark paint with not problems and with a layer of satin poly over the decals I was done... Or maybe at this scale a coat of matte is needed.  Anyway, thanks for looking. 

 

[1] I've included Anigrand's website for reference. It seems the site has not been updated since 2019, and emails bounce back.