Special Hobby X-15A-2 1:32 - Page 4 of 4

What’s under the lid?

Then I got my head down beavering away on the canopy of this thing. The part supplied by Special Hobby is bland to say the least – a single plain moulding with no detail on it whatsoever. The real thing had all sorts of gubbins inside it – window frames, spotlights, cameras, wiring, hinge plates, stiffeners, headrest, head restraint, canopy seals… all sorts, so it was out with the plastic card and rod. Once the parts had been fabricated and fitted, I gave it a coat of primer and paint, followed by a bit of detail painting, a coat of Klear, a pastel wash and added wiring followed by a matt coat gave the finishing touch. It’s not brilliant, and it’s not as busy as the real deal, but as it’s the underside of the lid and won’t be subjected to TOO close a scrutiny, I’m happy enough with it.

Canopy locks were added once the outside was painted, by the way – I haven’t forgotten them…

Seams like progress

The fuselage seams were so lousy that it took ages to get rid of them, and I lost all the fairly prominent rivet detail in the process. I then spent ages going over them with a beading tool putting them back in individually! The rivets look a bit rough at the start, but when sanded over and filled with a wash they look ok. It’s just very time consuming, that’s all – and it doesn’t half make your fingers ache! Once they were done, I was looking forward to getting the wings and tail on at last…

I decided then to have a go at the last real subassembly before the painting can start. The ventral fin and the dorsal fin both have airbrakes in them, and the kit provides the pistons for these as resin parts. In the ventral fin, which is open at the rear, there are also a few dump pipes and hydraulic lines which I decided to scratchbuild. I know it doesn’t look like it, but what with cleaning up resin parts, adjusting the fit and scratchbuilding parts, this is two hours’ work here…

I did all this before I attached the ventral fin to the fuselage, and made it all so that it could be fitted once the fin was in place. This meant I could putty and sand the fin/fuselage seam without fear of damaging these delicate structures.

Then, the wings finally went on! They were a dreadful fit against the fuselage, so I had to do a lot of fettling before I could get anything like a decent fit, but even then there were gaps at the leading and trailing edge root which had to be solved with plastic card. I also added the dorsal fin and the helium tank, so it actually started to look like a plane!

One thing I did next though, was detail the rear landing skids. The kit parts are pretty featureless lumps of plastic, so I scribed them to show the front and rear halves as being separate, drilled out the rear pivot points and inserted a length of plastic 1 mm diameter rod to simulate the pivot itself. I then had to drill a hole in the end of these rods, as the real thing was hollow tube. I then painted them NATO black, and as the front half of the assembly is the actual landing skid that contacts the ground, I weathered that part with drybrushing and pastel staining and gave it a coat of satin varnish. The pivots were painted zinc chromate as per the original. The weathering only just shows up on these pictures.

Paint-shop time

Then it was a case of painting the fuselage and wings with Tamiya NATO Black, which is actually a very dark grey, the reasons for which will become apparent soon. The upper surfaces were rubbed down when it’d had a while to dry, and then I did selected panels with different blacks to give a bit of life to the whole thing. I experimented with different black paints, and used Tamiya XF-1 to post-shade some of the panel lines and add some heat stressing to the top of the fuselage ahead of the leading edge. This was simply done by airbrushing streaks across the panel which only just showed up against the NATO Black. Quite subtle, and just what I was going for.

After I rubbed it all down, I smeared over some Promodeller Light Dirt Wash – I know you’re supposed to apply this over a gloss coat, but I find that Tamiya paint rubbed down with kitchen towel gives a smooth enough surface to take a wash! In case anyone thinks the wash is too stark, it shows up brighter on the pics than in real life, and in any case, looking at the real one, the surface details are pretty prominent. I spent a while masking off selected panels according to my references, which was tricky as the panels seemed to change over time. I suppose new panels were added at various points in its life. Then I used a light coat of Alclad Stainless Steel on the panels, and then went over that with the thinned black. I made some panels darker than others, and introduced some heat staining lines freehand with the airbrush. Once glossed over, I think it’s pretty close to the look I was going for.

I fitted the ball nose and after some careful masking and spraying several Alclads and clear colours, the result was pretty convincing.

Last minute glitches…

The decals went on, and the large NASA stripe on the port fin actually broke while I was applying it, but I seem to have healed it. The canopy props were scratchbuilt according to references, and weathered with the hairspray technique. They were a bear to get to fit right, and Special Hobby had made no provision for the canopy to be displayed open so it was supported by a pin of steel wire at the rear and by a couple of scratchbuilt poles at the front. These were apparently the hi-tech solution to holding the heavy canopy open on the real thing. The airbrakes were very fiddly to get to fit, and it’s a good job I checked my references before I drilled the holes to mount the dolly – the kit instructions would have you drill them in COMPLETELY the wrong place. Watch out for that if you’re thinking of building this kit…

I left it with a reasonably shiny finish as most of my reference pictures appear to my eye to show this. Some people claim it to have a satin or matt finish, but I reckon that’s just because the original has been sitting in a dusty museum for forty years…

Aaaannnd rest…

So, without mounting the tanks, I took some photos of the model in its svelte state, just for posterity.

Then I fattened it up by adding the tanks, and called it finished.

I spent 114 hours on this kit, adding over 200 scratchbuilt parts over ten months, easily my longest build to date…I reckon that works out at about 50p per hour based on the cost of the kit and consumables! Cheapest form of entertainment you’ll get in these austere times…

Dean L.