Oh
well…on with the build…
The
kit is moulded in grey plastic and there are few parts. Markings are
provided for two colour schemes – a test aircraft in a fictional gloss grey
and black scheme, and an “operational” version in all-over black with red
markings a la SR-71. Both schemes look quite nice, although I’m not sure
a test aircraft would be grey and black?? Obviously, my choice would be
neither – being based on the “real” (!!) operational scheme of black and
white.
The
layout of the main fuselage and wing pieces is distinctive, being split into
four – upper and lower front fuselage and upper and lower rear fuselage.
The “wingtips” are separate and are designed so that they can be modelled
raised or lowered. The step between the front and rear fuselage halves is
staggered for strength and there is also a prop in the front fuselage. The
rear fuselage pieces are almost a foot square – which makes working difficult
if you have a limited space.
I
started construction by tackling the cockpit interior. Testors have
decided that the SR-75 is a 3-seater, with pilot, navigator / electronics
officer and a “guy-in-back” facing backwards to manage the launch of the
XR-7. The cockpit is built up from a simple tub with three instrument
panels and three ACES II seats – the rear-most one facing backwards. I
sprayed the interior using Halfords Gray Plastic Primer, which has the curious
property of being almost identical to Dark Gull Grey! I chose to replace
the kit seats with Aires replacements and these were also sprayed grey. I
painted the cushions black and the straps green on the basis that it was a
stealth aircraft, which works for me! The cockpit interior had the various
panels painted black and then dry-brushed with grey to bring out the detail.
I weathered the seats using “The Detailer” which does a great job of making
detail “pop out” although it does darken the finish and make it slightly
shiny. I didn’t go over the top here as this was meant to be a
“quick” project. At this point I went to glue the seats into place,
and found one missing! Given that I’d just moved model rooms, I suppose
it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it was annoying. Oh well,
lucky I had some spares in stock!
Next
step was to spray the undercarriage bays, first with Halfords White Plastic
Primer and then with Halfords Appliance White. I then glued them into the
lower fuselage parts using superglue. I then glued the interior tub into
the top forward fuselage. At the same time, the instructions call for the
engine intakes to be added. I started by spraying the outsides with a coat
of Gray Plastic Primer, then Matt Black and then followed up with a couple of
coats of Halfords Nissan Silver, left over from my Monogram NB-52E project.
They were then super-glued into the lower fuselage halves – the fit wasn’t
perfect so it’s a good thing I used gap-filling superglue! Next, I
sprayed all of the interior pieces with the black primer so that it would stop
the fuselage from appearing to be translucent.
You
may be wondering why the excessive use of Halfords products? Well, I’m
basically lazy! Spraying with a can means I can get a lot done very
quickly and move on to other things!
The
next step (once the paint was dry obviously!) was to spray the exhausts silver
and glue them into the lower fuselage halves. Again, I used superglue for
this for speed.
Now
the fun really started! I don’t like raised panel lines so I elected to
rescribe everything before I glued the halves together. I used a Hasegawa
Tritool scriber (which used to be manufactured by Tri-Part) – this looks
similar to an Olfa P-Cutter. I’ve gone through at least three Bare-Metal
Scribers in the past; whilst they scribe very well, I have a bad habit of
scribing across my metal rule and breaking the tips off! So far, the
Hasegawa tool has fared far better. I used a combination of a Scale
Aircraft Modelling ruler (staple of my tool box!), Tri-Parts scribing templates
and a steel rule, together with some Dymo lettering tape to do the job.
Where I overshot in places, I dripped super glued into the erroneous area and
then rescribed it again until I was happy. I then sanded everything down
using a couple of sanding sticks and finished off by running liquid cement into
the lines to clean them up.
Having
got the “housekeeping” out of the way, the big job started – joining the
fuselage quarters together! I had previously started the AMT/ERTL XB-70
Valkyrie (note that I didn’t say FINISHED!!) and had had major problems
getting the fuselage to stick together. I chose this time to glue the
front and rear halves together so I could keep them flat, rather than joining
upper and lower halves. It was at this point in time I realised just how
BIG the finished model was going to be. Having built a Monogram B-52,
Airfix B-1 and AMT/ERTL KC-135, I’m used to larger models, but this surprised
me – my workbench started to look quite small!
Whilst
my original plan was to glue upper halves together and then mate them to the
lower halves, this did not work in practice. I started by filling the
upper front “quarter” with Wickes Foam Filler, but when this had dried and
finished expanding I realised that the Testors plastic was so soft it had
distorted! In the end, I superglued the upper and lower sections together
(front and rear) and then filled each part (front fuselage and rear fuselage)
with the foam. Once set this made the fuselage rock solid.
I
then glued the front and rear fuselage halves together and discovered that one
half was slightly smaller than the other leaving a slight step. I managed
to get rid of most of this using Isopon P-38 car filler, but it did leave a
small area I just couldn’t get rid of. This left me with a more or less
complete airframe so the next step was to add the wing tips and fill the joint.
A final clean up of the panel lines and it was time for painting!
I
masked off the undercarriage bays with the doors and added the cockpit canopies
and fairings as it made sense to do it at this stage. I primed the whole
airframe with Halfords gray primer and went through a few cycles of fill, sand
and prime…
Several
weeks later (well, that’s what it felt like!!!) I oversprayed the gray primer
with several coats of Halfords White primer in preparation for the top coat.
I chose to use the Appliance White again as this covers well. Next time I
will use straight Gloss White as the Appliance White dries quite dusty.
After four or five coats I was left with a reasonably nice, and more or less
complete finish. I left this to dry, then masked the wing edges and
sprayed Halfords Matt Black. When dry, the masking was removed … and the
aircraft was basically finished!!
Now
it’s time to spill the beans… I had been keeping this build quiet to
surprise Haydn Hughes (the IPMS UK USAF SIG Leader) – I’d actually been
scribing the fuselage halves the weekend before the 2005 Scale Modelworld!
By the Thursday evening, I’d got the painting finished but quickly realised
that there was no way I was going to get it completely finished in time!
Since this was a “black” project, I theorised that it would have limited
markings, and for the purposes of the Nationals I assumed it would have been
trialled with no markings at all! So I concentrated on getting the
undercarriage on and the gear doors in place. Taking this approach meant
that I was able to get it into it’s lair (i.e. the large box normally used to
transport my NB-52E!) by Friday evening.
At
Scale Modelworld it attracted quite a lot of interest which pleased me no end
– it completely overshadowed my Bird Of Prey (which Haydn WAS expecting!).
When
I got back I resolved to get it finished – which turned out to be quite time
consuming. The kit markings were in red, but I wanted to use black to
match the black and white scheme as I thought red would be too obvious.
Unfortunately, the font of the stencilling was identical to that used for the
SR-71. I could have just used standard
Amarillo
but wanted to remain true to the idea, so ended up making most of the markings
from scratch using Corel Draw and printing them using my Alps MD-1000 printer.
This worked extremely well and enabled me to add not only the “No Step”,
“Danger” and “Beware Of Blast” stencils, but also the panel markings
(which I assume cover access panels for the reconnaissance pods) on the
underside of the front fuselage.
For
the black ejection warning triangles, I resorted to a couple of Hobby Decal A-10
sheets – these are of the “rub-down” variety and worked a treat.
Finally, I added the walkways from 1/16th inch Superscale black lines
and the launch “rail” on the raised rear empennage from 1/8th
scale lining.
To
finish off, I opened the canopies tidied up the undercarriage. The plastic
was so weak that both outriggers snapped and I had to reinforce them with steel
tubing. Luckily all wheels contact the ground, reducing the likelihood of
breakage.
Finally,
it was finished. I was extremely pleased with this build – it could have
been better but my output of late has not been exactly prolific so I was happy
to get it finished. If nothing else, it made Haydn’s day!