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Any of you who have seen
my collection of models will know that it is somewhat
“esoteric”. I tend to produce models that most people
wouldn’t touch with a barge-poll (how many Matchbox Victor
tankers have YOU seen completed! Airfix B-1 anyone??).
I quite like off-the-wall
aircraft so when I found this on E-Bay, I just had to have
it … I thought that it would add nicely to my (planned)
reconnaissance and stealth collection. I can’t remember how
much I paid for the SR-75 but it wasn’t a huge amount of
money. I would have liked the version of the kit which came
with the XR-7, but you can’t have everything!
Testors seem to have
decided that their role in life is to produce kits which
make you think – for example their F-19 Stealth. The SR-75
is no exception to this. The aircraft looks much like a
cross between a scaled-up SR-71 and an XB-70 Valkyrie. It
has the long nose and chines of the SR-71 but the engine
configuration and wing layout of the Valkyrie and looks
pretty good. The size of the beast is apparent – it’s
nearly twice the size of the SR-71 and more or less the same
size as the XB-70! Its special feature is the piggybacked
XR-7, which sits on a flat raised section on the rear
fuselage. The tailplanes are canted outwards to avoid the
jet blast and there is a dedicated crewmember to watch the
launch (must be a bit boring for the other hours of the
flight!!)
So where did Testors get
their inspiration from?? Well… Since the early 1990’s
there have been reports of unknown large aircraft over the
US – the first of these coming from Nevada and the Antelope
Valley region of California in 1990. The aircraft spotted
was described as being around 200 feet long and resembled
the XB-70 with a large delta wing, tip-mounted rudders and
large underwing engine pods. It was white (or light gray)
overall with black leading and trailing edges. Various
other sightings were made and a large “SR-71-shaped” forward
fuselage section was spotted being loaded onto a C-5 galaxy
at Lockheed’s Skunk Works – it was headed for Boeing Field
in Seattle. Strange “donut-on-a-rope” contrails were also
sighted on a number of occasions and it was thought that
these were symbolic of a Pulse-Wave-Detonation-Engine (PWDE).
During this time period,
major modifications were also noted to Area 51. The runway
was extended to almost 7 miles long, large (unidentified)
fuel tanks were installed and a huge hangar was built –
known as “Hangar 18”.
Given that the US had
retired the SR-71 and had limited ability to launch
satellites into space, it was thought that something must
exist to fill these joint requirements, and maybe this
aircraft was it?? It was quite conceivable that it could be
a launch platform for some kind of aerospace plane,
especially since the idea had been trialled before with the
XB-70/X-15 and M-21/D-21. Through various sources in the
military, the name Brilliant Buzzard was mentioned.
BRILLIANT is a US prefix indicating a Strategic Defense
Initiative Organisation space-based programme. It has been
theorized that the “Brilliant Buzzard” was then developed
into the “Snow Bird” as a high-speed reconnaissance
aircraft.
Interesting stuff… but
very difficult to verify!
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 – 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! |
