Building this pair
of kits was a bit of an internet adventure with lots of help from people around
the world, more about that later.
The X 15 was and
still is the fastest plane ever built, capable of travelling at Mach 6.7. There
were 3 of them built, 2 can be found in museums and on crashed. when fully
loaded with its external tanks the X 15 weighed 25 tons, that's quite a weight
to carry and then drop from under one wing so the B 52 was something special for
the task.
Monogram issued the
2 kits in one box a number of years ago and you can still get it on e-bay if
you're willing to pay 150 USD. Well I wasn't so I took the old fashioned way of
building something you can't buy. Of course when I was finished, Cutting Edge
come out with the exact set of decals I needed for the B52, but that's life.
The X 15 launch pylon was carved from balsa wood and then sanded and primed a
few times. To get the nice sharp edge where it meets the X 15 a filled the
cavity in the pylon with milliput and then laid a sheet of grease proof baking
paper over it. I then pressed the X 15 into the milliput and allowed it to dry.
The paper came off easily and then all was needed to sand the milliput to the
right external profile. A lot of dry runs and trimming of the pylon were then
needed with the B 52 and X 15 together to get the right attitude and ground
clearance for the X 15. A balsa tail plug was shaped and glued into the tail.
The camera fairings on the starboard side were also carved from balsa wood and
primed/sanded a few times. The notch was cut out of the starboard wing and boxed
in with plastic card.
The B 52 still has
the 'goldfish bowl' view port on the clear sprue so this was used as-is. The fit
of the main windows wasn't so good so these were taped over and the gap filled
with milliput and sanded until smooth. New ejector seats were made using 2
spares left over from a V22 Osprey of all things, as there were only 2 posts for
the pilots to sit on in the kit.
I didn't bother to
re-scribe the panel lines on this, the plane is just too big.
The X 15 went
together very quickly, the only change I made was making a new lower ventral
fin.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Then it was onto the
painting. To get a good solid dayglo colour I first primed the dayglo and orange
areas white. The dayglo, Humbrol Fire Orange, was built up of a lot of thin
layers, this dayglo paint really doesn't cover very well. After hearing horror
stories about how poorly it bonds a sealed the dayglo with a couple of layers of
Xtracolour varnish. The rest of the 'plane was painted using Xtracolour paints.
Because of the size
of the B52 I waited until painting was complete before I attached the wings.
Decals were a
mixture. Tango Pappa provided the USAF, US insignia and the launch tally.
Almark provided the 'High and
Mighty' logo, the rest came from the kits. Everything went on fine with no
silvering. A final coat of Xtracolour semi gloss sealed everything in.
The X 15 was glued
in place and there it was, done. As you can see from the attached picture, this
is a big kit. The Phantom in the picture is 1/48 scale by the way.
And now for the
credits. Thank you :
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Brian Lockett of
the Goletta Air and Space museum for the colour scheme
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Tom Baker of
Tango Pappa for the super thin decals
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Sven Knudsen of
the Ninfinger website for the NB52A mothership photo's
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Mike Acteson of
the IPMS UK Decal bank for the Almark set, a very useful service to everyone
out there
Toby
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