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SR-71 Blackbird

By Brad Guy

Twenty years ago, my wife and I won $80 in the Colorado lottery. We immediately took the bus across town, where she bought a kitten, and I went across the lot to Colpar Hobbies and bought Testor's 1:48 scale SR-71. I got about 90% of the way through construction, but stalled out at the painting stage. The model hung in my garage until last year, when I decided to finish it.

The first thing I did was try to take it apart, which wasn't easy to do, as I had put it together with gap filling CA. The kit is pretty primitive, with large gaps at the seams. So lots of gap filler was used, and it really didn't want to come apart. Instead, I left well enough alone where I could, and used a razor saw for the bits that needed to come off.

The kit has windows for the camera bays, but nothing to see inside. I didn't think there would be much in the way of references for these cameras, this being a top secret spy plane and all. But a quick Google Images search set me straight. There are tons of references! None of these cameras are used anymore, and it appears they have all been declassified. This let me scratchbuild the cameras as accurately as my clumsy hands would allow. I also built a section of the main fuel tank, which runs down the middle of the fuselage, and is partly visible behind the cameras.

The afterburner cans are fairly deep for such an old kit, but somewhat rudimentary. I read an article on Aircraft Resource Center by a guy who scratchbuilt the afterburners, and I loved the idea. I also have a lot of reference pictures I took at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas, and the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. These really came in handy here. In fact I almost decided to scratchbuild an entire engine, from shock cone to afterburner, before sanity took hold.

A plane like this needs to be displayed in flight. So I closed the landing gear bays and installed a mounting lug through one of the doors.

The pitot tube was made from a sewing needle and a short piece of wire, CA'd together and sanded to shape. I blunted the end, but it's still pretty sharp and scares the heck out of everybody.

It seems I can no longer build an aircraft without rescribing all the panel lines. This kit really needed it, as all the panel lines are raised. So I spent about a month scribing lines and replicating rivet detail with a pounce wheel and various punches.

Mr. Surfacer 1200 was used for primer, and polished smooth with a cotton cloth. I painted the entire thing with Model Master enamels, thinned with lacquer thinner. The color is actually a very dark blue: dark sea blue mixed with aircraft interior black. This was used as a preshade along all panel lines and in recesses, then airbrushed lightly, one panel at a time. Each panel was painted individually, before moving on to the next one. This allowed for a subtle variation in tone which is evident in the real aircraft. The afterburners were painted with Alclad II stainless steel and titanium, then heat-distressed with transparent blue and red. Finally I added layers of Model Master jet exhaust and burnt metal. I should have stopped while I was ahead here, because after so many layers of paint, the subtle colors of the afterburners just sort of blended together and lost their appeal.

As fate would have it, just as I started this project, Afterburner Decals released a set of Viet Nam era markings for this kit. I don't know how they knew I was working on this, but bless them! I hand brushed on three coats of Future with a wide, flat brush, and applied the decals. The ones I thought would be hardest turned out to go on quite well, the Air Force markings over the corrugated surfaces. They responded easily to Micro-Sol, and the carrier film disappeared into the surface. Some of the other markings, such as the No Step labels and the "Charlie's Problem" markings on the stabilizers, silvered a little bit.

Dull coat went on after the decals, and the panel lines received a pin wash with oil paint and turpenoid. Then I applied a dot filter over the entire plane. Hundreds of small dots of oil paint in blue, orange, white, and ochre, were daubed on, then blended downward with a wide brush and turpenoid. I applied a final coat of clear satin lacquer, this time tinted with very light blue, almost white. This was allowed to build up along the top of the fuselage and upper wings, to give a little more color modulation. The underside of these planes are usually slick with leaking JP7 jut fuel. I tried to replicate that by brushing on some tinted Future, but the brush marks are too evident. Fixing this is not a priority, but it will happen someday.

The mount is just a chunk of acrylic I salvaged from an old curtain rod, stuck into a wood plaque.

As usual, I'd like to build another some day. One with the camera bays open and being serviced, and one engine sitting on a work stand. But newer projects beckon...

Image: Bottom Left

Image: Cameras

Image: Canopy

Image: Exhuast

Image: More Exhaust

Image: Underside

Image: Intake Details

Image: Mount

Image: No Step

Image: Rear Fuselage

Image: More Exhaust

Image: Front

Image: Front High

Image: Front Right Low

Image: Rear Left

Image: Right

Image: Top Rear

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