Another
in the series of drone aircraft comes up in today's completion. This is the
Lockheed D-21, a pure recon drone that most of us will have seen as part of the
Italeri kit of the SR-71. It had a rather troubled history. First off, each
D-21 was considered expendable; once the film was shot, the cartridge ejected
from the drone and the aircraft blown up while the film was recovered. If that
wasn't bad enough, the fourth test launch separation struck the SR-71's tail
fins, crashing both aircraft and killing the Launch Control Officer. The rest
of the testing was rather sensibly done from a B-52, where the drone could be
dropped from under the wing rather than from over the fuselage.
The
kit is very simple, with only a few parts to put together. And the paint job is
pretty simple too. In fact, this one have been a truly short job if I hadn't
spilled part of a bottle of Tenax on my workbench that caught one part of the
lower wing surface. I had just been reading about a fellow modeller on 72nd
Scale Aircraft who had experienced this particular disaster, so I am well and
truly empathetic. Nothing to do except wait for it to cure, sand off the
damaged section as thoroughly as possible, apply a coat of thick black paint,
and move on.
This
is completed aircraft #444 (#8 for the year), finished in February of 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment