This is my debut on ARC:
the North American X-15-1, by Dragon and me.
The model represents first produced (second flying) X-15 in its earliest stage
of life. This offers the opportunity to present XLR-11 intermediate engines
along with boom nose.
This airplane logged
rather low flying hours, having its propulsion replaced to XLR-99 in 1961.
No chance for
spectacular wear and tear then... To make the model more attractive visually I
did some cheating. Or speculation. Or both. I used well known X-15-2 photos for
reference of surface wear and panel color variation. As for blue/green wingtip
containers - the X-15-1 flew with them in 1964, and I found no reference against
flying them earlier in life of this airframe. So there you have me...
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images below to see larger images
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Dragon chose to best
Matchbox in the panel lines department. I must admit they succeeded, especially if
you compare this kit to, say, the latest Eduard, or Platz releases. They also badly
misinterpreted the back of the airplane. Those were two main gripes I tried to
tackle while building this model.
I dealt with panel lines
by spraying several coats of primer and sanding it down to bare plastic. Looking
at finished model I cannot say this was a successful attempt.
The back of the model is where almost all of the things happen. This had to be
improved, because Dragon got everything wrong: the XLR-11 location, depth of
nozzles, shape of fuselage, landing skids... To deal with this I used some
putty, 1.2mm diameter brass tubes, injection needles and thin wire.
I also used several
items from Brengun PE set (front gear cover, aero-brakes actuators and fuselage
antennas). Nose boom was made of needle, wire and PE vans.
Paint job consists mostly
of multiple layers of Lifecolor Tensocrom smoke, burnt brown, kerosene, rust
over black and rubber black base. Frost on the bottom of the fuselage is white
Tamiya acrylic.
Decals provided by
Dragon were quite good - thin and with minimal film around markings.
Leszek Golubinski
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images below to see larger images
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