Tamiya X-1 Finale

 The finals steps for the construction was to put on the landing gear and doors. Usually I put them on when the instructions say to, and then I always knock them off somewhere along the line. Another was to paint and glue on the cockpit canopy. The final step was to put on the decals. Despite looking rather aged, they went on with no problems. One toward the end did rip, but joined up rather nicely. 

With the number of pitot tubes on the craft I decided to glue the plane onto it's base. For that I took a regular 6"X6" square piece of wood and then cut some styrene grooved with "expansion joints" for detail. With that, I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Tamiya X-1

 Back to my aviation subjects. This time I'm digging into the historical that isn't a hypothetical or drawing board plane. It's the Bell X-1.  Most people will remember it as a supersonic research project built by Bell Aircraft. 

The model is 1:72 scale with 2 sprues of gray styrene, one clear, include the making for a see through section of the aircraft, and one sprue of white which will be a base for building the aircraft in flight mode. 

First thing after giving the instructions a once over was to convert all the paint ref. numbers (all Tamiya) to the color names. I decided that I wouldn't make the plane see through so I could eliminate a lot of the planes extra innards... Assembly of the cockpit was first.

The kit comes with a ball bearing to act as a weight, and they have that located in the first cylinder behind the cockpit. I also thought this a good idea to add as I couldn't tell if you could see it or not once the cockpit was installed. (You can't). 

 

Right after the above image was taken I installed the instrument panel, and then the engine cluster in the read. Only other thing to do was close it up. 

Time to get paint on the X-1. Vallejo is notorious for have pretty weak pigmented yellow and orange colors, so I bought the Tamiya brand. However reading it again it's 8 parts orange, 1 part Tamiya Clear Red. I didn't have Clear Red, but Vallejo has Transparent Red. I thought the result turned out pretty well. 

Next was to install the wings and horizontal stabilizers. All went on fairly easily except one of the horizontal ones the tab seemed in the wrong position. I cut until it might has well been a butt joint. So I added some CA glue to the styrene cement, and gave it support. I left it over night to dry. So that where we'll leave it for now. Check back and thanks for looking. 

 

Northrop XP-79B Finale

 For the finale, my main job was to paint the plane and then add the canopy. Websites were saying it was white, the instructions called the color linen. So I decided to split the difference in that I took Ivory, and add one drop of V's Iraqi Sand which is a light beige color.

Next was the canopy. I found that yes indeed, the canopy was split vertically down the middle. So I was just a matter of gluing the 2 halves together.  They are to be butt jointed together, and I had a piece of Tamiya tape at the ready. I had the two pieces and touched it with some Tamiya thin,seeing the glue run around the joint. I then added the tape to make sure they held until the weld was complete. Thinking so, I gently put it down on the tale and let go. Immediately I felt my finger slowly pull away! What?! Yep. Glue came out of the joint and ran to where my finger was, leaving this very nice finger print. Insert multiple cuss words here. 

While I was waiting for the canopy to dry, I created a little tarmac with the plan of gluing the plane to the ground to eliminate the tail sitting or the need for the little post to hold the plane up. 

After the glue was dry I sanded the sanding marathon, first with some 3M sanding sponges from fine to ultra fine. Then I went into the 1000ths grit. After hours with canopy was smooth again, but there was still a cloudy bit to it that wouldn't go away - even after a few dippings of Future. What I ended up doing was mixing Future with V's Smoke and created a window tinting. It ended up mostly making all the work I did to the interior moot, but the cloudy mark was covered up. 

Thanks for looking. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Northrop XP-79B

 I picked up this kit a while ago, just because it fit my  idea of an odd ball plane. It wasn't mentioned on the box that it was a Northrop design until I started to research. 

The military, toward the end of WW2 felt they needed a plane that could ram enemy planes similar to what Germany was rumored to be designing.  Northrop came up with this design complete with magnesium wings to help the plane survive the hit. 

One was built and on it's first trial the XP-79B made its first flight on September 12, 1945, however, 15 minutes into the flight control was lost for unknown reasons while performing a slow roll. The nose dropped, and the roll continued with the aircraft impacting the ground in a vertical spin. There are two accounts of the end. One that test pilot Harry Crosby attempted to bail out but was struck by the aircraft and died. The other that in the spin, with such forces, he was unable to open the door open to bail out. The problem was identified, and Northrop was ready for prototype #2, but they were told with the war over, there was no longer a need for a Flying Ram. 

RS Models, out of the Czech Republic offers the 1:72 scale kit on one sprue with another smaller sprue for the clear windscreen. Directions were exploded views and as I will find out a little vague on where parts actually go. The decals are well done.

 As part of the design, the pilot was to lie prone to better help him with the g-forces. The model comes top and bottom so part of the cockpit area attaches to the ceiling of the plane, the other part on the floor. A box forms the confines of the cockpit.

A bench for the pilot to lay on is to be painted a leather color, and the steering goes underneath the bench. The first vague part comes here. There's no real indication of how far out the wheel sits. So I made my best guess. The color calls for the interior to be "interior yellow." I never hear of this before and thought they meant the zinc chromate color. I only had the green zinc chromate which bears no resemblance to yellow so I painted it lime green (a color which will be changed in the 11th hour).

The tub with two sets of where instruments went. I painted instruments the best I could only to realize that once the halves are glued together no one will ever see them again.  Across the front part of the cockpit more instruments are on a flattened bar.

This let to the problem with the bar and the steering wheel. With no indication of where it went, I had it in my head that it seemed possible for the pilot to be stretched out with his arms holding the wheel on the "outside" of the instrument bar.  

That was until I found this image - - 

 So a little late but the mystery of where the steering wheel went was solved. This solved another mystery of WHY would they make the windscreen in two halves, split vertically down the middle??  Why when it's like that in real life.

But that will come next time after the glue dries and all the clamps come off the plane. Thanks for looking. 

 

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.

Douglas Sky Streak part 2

 It's been a while since I had the oomph to get back to the lair, But I got there and did a little more opn the Skystreak. 

My first fully (almost) successful elimination of seam lines on resin I gave a light coat of primer. 

There's a few Euro guys building models on You Tube where they paint a dark primer, and then some white squiggles on top of that which mimics an uneven topcoat spray. So I tried it.

 

Doing research, I read the color was Insignia Red, the write up also said Tamiya's equivalent was Flat Red. I don't have Tamiya, but Vallejo also has a Flat Red.  After the spray which covered and yet still showed a hint of the squiggle, the color dried... not the right color. So I ended up giving it a mist coat of V's Scarlet (a *tiny* bit more orange). It looked good, but that coat was enough to hide the squiggles. Dang it!!

The next day I came back and added the decals. evidently there is a few versions with both red and white color schemes. Being this is probably one of the oldest kits I have, I wasn't too sure about the decals, so the day before I put some Decal Film over them.  So today I cut them out and added them. Besides coming off the backing paper a little slowly they all came off in one piece. The stars and bars went over a little raised area, and with the film on they were a little thick. Before calling it for the day, I added some setter, to see if they snuggle down. Check back for the result. After that is add the canopy and the wheels and I'll have another done. Thanks for looking.

Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak

 The new year starts off with a look back to the NACA days and the aircraft D 558-1 Skystreak built by Douglas. From the website:

The D-558-I "Skystreaks" were among the early transonic research airplanes like the X-1, X-4, X-5, and XF-92A. Three of the single-seat, straight-wing aircraft flew in a joint program involving the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the Navy-Marine Corps, and the Douglas Aircraft Co. from 1947 to 1953. In the process, the Skystreaks set two world speed records.

This is another very nice albeit old 1:72 resin kit from Anigrand Craftswork.

Not taking any chances of it being a tail sitter I added a lot of the Liquid Gravity beads to most of the open spaces forward of the landing gear.

The cockpit panel was just bare, and there was no decals for one, so I just added my own white dots. I should have looked first as all the instrumentation is black, but no one will be easily able to see it anyway...

The session ends with me closing up the fuselage with probably the best fit I've ever encountered with these smallish resin kit companies. Also on the drill is the seat. I tried something a saw where a tissue is white glued to the seat so it can be manipulated and form folds or creases. In this case it didn't appear to work. I just used one ply from the tissue. I'm thinking the tissue was too thin. Next time I'll try some toilet paper. Who knows- maybe 1:72 is too small to try it?  The final thing in the image is a line of sand color paint. Under the paint is a .5mm tape that will be the seat belts. But that's for next time. Thanks for looking.

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

 

New

This time around I have 2 figures and another weird plane.  Anyone who knows me, knows I like the weird or bizarre aviation.  This one I saw covered in a recent issue of SAMI magazine.  It's the Kalinin K-12.  From  a site: 

Experimental tailless bomber with two M-22 engines, yet another step on K.A.Kalinin's way towards his dream - rocket-powered supersonic flying wing aircraft. Light bomber carried crew of three.
Confidence in the K-12 was so high, that the experimental aircraft was included in Tushino parade fly-past on August 18, 1937. Painted in impressive feather-pattern, it was presented under nickname 'Zhar-ptitsa' (Fire-bird).
Ten K-12 were built, but production was cancelled when K.A.Kalinin became a victim of Stalin's purges.

I was able to get this kit from Ebay, coming all the way from the Ukraine. 
 
Next up are two busts. Pan (from Pans Labyrinth) by Angels by Noemi, and can be gotten from her ETSY page.
And fans of horror knows this bust needs no intro - Peter Cushing as Baron Von Frankensten, by John Dennett, and MoonDevil studio.  The Baron is the first in a set of busts of Hammer Film characters. The next one,which is already released and on it's way to me, is Christopher Lee as Frankenstein. But we'll see that next time. Til then here are the busts - 

Worm Hole Exploration Module

This is a 1/72 scale kit from Black Sun Models (BSM). From the entry - 

1/72 replica of the IASA module that got sucked in to a wormhole, propelling Astronaut John Crichton into a distant part of the universe. Features complete interior, optional hedge drive parts, clear vacuformed canopy and ALPS-printed waterslide decals by JBOT. May be built with gear up or down.

As you may or may not know from the name John Crichton is one of the characters from the TV show Farscape.
The model is in about 16 parts and the resin is bubble free, and a few seam lines are easily cleaned off. 

(from Starship Modeler Store)

  The first thing after it's wash, was to prime in white and start adding the cockpit components - 

There are two side panels that are very well detailed. To "busy" it up, I painted in a lot of buttons - 

There are also side windows according to the box art. I saw, after the fact, that there was black decals for these windows. But I didn't know about them til later, and began cutting out the windows - 

The box art

 

 The cutouts will let the observer have a better look at the side panels. Now's the time to install the side panels, and the optional hedge drive engines, and begin painting. It was stated the the hedge drive engines didn't appear until later in the series. Not a huge fan of the show, I just decided to install them.

The top was to be an off white and the bottom a dark gray color - easy enough except that I forgot about the "off" part and painted it Gloss White. 

Then the problems started.  BSM gives you not one or two vac form canopies, but 4 of them. They were Futured, and when cut out, none of them fit. Being all the same, they were all too small. Even when I installed a 2mm piece of styrene (which also meant I needed to do more filling and repaint) it was still a bit too small. 
Installing the landing gear, I realized that I was given two starboard land gear!  With the frustration fairly high at this point I just installed the wrong gear essentially backwards. The next cheap-o plane model I can get my hands on, I'll cannibalize the gear for this model. 
 
Not the kit's fault but I had planned on using Micro Kristal Klear to fill in those side windows. Nope. The space was too big. I had to cut out clear pieces of plastic and install that. 

Taking a deep breath, I weathered the bottom of the craft. Having already glossed the top I finished the model by adding the decals. 

Despite the problems, the model turns out to be a nice "2 foot model". It looks good from 2 feet away. Will it win any awards? No. But it looks nice next to my other single seater space vehicles. Thanks for looking.

Calling the CAM-23 done

This session I took some MIG pigments and mixed it with some water and then ran the mix into the panel lines on the green surfaces. Since I can't find out if this is an experimental plane or not, I didn't want too beat up looking. For the Light Blue on the bottom I tried a little trick that I saw on You Tube in that I traced the panel lines with a 4B pencil and then smudged it with a cotton bud.

I then airbrushed another layer of Vallejo's Matt Clear and the silvering around the decals finally disappeared.
With that done I added the wheels, the canopy which needed a little Kristal Klear, and the propeller. Then there was two little spots on the boom that I painted on some Vallejo Air Steel, and highlighted the pistons (or whatever) with some VA Aluminum.   Its done. Weird, the lights are making my Bronze Green paint look a blue color. Hmmm...

 Thanks for looking.