Bowcat's Italeri SR-71 Blackbird

[Guest]

I had to go back to the first page to check this was indeed 1:72 scale as I thought I remembered it to be

[BattleshipBob]

Hi Bob

Thats a great start and one hell of a plane. Bet the crew got a shed load of clubcard points when filling it up!!

[scottie3158]

Bob.
Looking good so far the details look great.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers gents.

With the cockpit installed in the fuselage the kit came together quite fast.

Not sure why I did all the detail work, having masked the cockpit windows very little is going to be seen once it's painted. Still, all good practice.



I'm glad I went with the 1/72 kit now, this kite is big. Imagine it in 1/48. :surprised:

[Mr Bowcat]

Evening chaps.

I haven't done much the last couple of days as I have been waiting for some acrylic rod to arrive.

I'd already decided to pose this in flight, but have now decided to have it in a near vertical clime. This is mainly to save on shelf space, but also 'cos it should look hella cool. :tongue-out3:

For this reason I'm fitting it with two rods, one up each nacelle (ooh er). I started by drilling out the rear of the engines to the diameter of the rod.



The engine rings were taped in place and the rods pushed all the way through.



Now the clever bit (I hope). I filled the ends of the cones with Milliput and pushed them on to the ends of the rod, then pushed the whole lot back into the nacelles. My hope is that because of the conical piece the rods should self center.



The cones aren't glued in yet, but hopefully when the Milliput dries I can take it apart to paint the ends of the engines and it should all then go back together the same way for gluing.

[Guest]

Good plan, that should fix them nice and secure. You’ll want to make sure the inlet cones are glued nice and secure to the rest of the model, though

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Jakko. Yep, was planning on using some 2 part epoxy for the cones.

[Guest]

Hi Bob some very nice work going on. Keep it up.
Pete.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Pete.

[scottie3158]

Bob,
Nice idea using the rod and a clever way of securing it.

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers.

Let's hope it works.

[adt70hk]

Hi Bob

Got to say it's looking very good. Love the vertical climb idea too.

ATB

Andrew

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Andrew.

[Ian M]

Looking very good. Milliput. Saviour of many a problem. Love the stuff.
If there are two US cold war aircraft I would like to find shelf space for this is one of them The other? B1b 'the bone'
My problem is in 1/48 they use rather a lot of shelf space lol.

Bit of a bummer that All that detail work you have put into the cockpit will never be seen but as you said good practice. Though I'm not sure I would have bothered :/ I would rather use the money on something that can be seen. (Being on a zero Income has changed the way I think about a lot of things!)

[Mr Bowcat]

Cheers Ian.

In retrospect I don't think I should have bothered either. You live and learn.