Revell D-558-2 Skyrocket

[Jay Chladek]

I'll leave it to the mods to determine if this is indeed an official build or not, given that I have practically no work in progress shots to show for it (and given the fact that this description is being submitted AFTER I finished the thing, that is how fast it went together). But I give you my word that this is a truthful account of the events of September 19, 2012 and my brush with modeling crazyness.

During the late 1970s and early 80s, Revell kits were a big part of what I built. Science fiction came somewhat later, as did real space. When the movie "The Right Stuff" came out in 1984, it started a love affair with the Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket as flown by Scott Crossfield to Mach 2 (represented in the film by quick cuts of a Hawker Hunter painted to look like the 558... I guess the tail profile is close if you squint).

I built other kits as a kid, but I never got my hands on the Revell 1/65 scale Skyrocket as it wasn't available when my interest in space and X-planes started. In 1994, that changed when Revell repopped the kit as part of their SSP line. While the mold dates back to 1955 according to the copyright stamp on the parts, to that point except for one other styrene kit and some balsa ones, no other kit existed of the D-558-2. Academy Minicraft (when they were one company) had plans in place to issue a new tool 1/72 Skyrocket with its P2B (B-29) mothership, but it seems this kit was a casualty of the split when Academy and Minicraft went their separate ways.

For years, this kit sat in storage, but the box art always caught my eye with its classic box art. A few years ago, I also read the autobiography "The Lonely Sky" by William Bridgeman, the Douglas corporation test pilot who took the Skyrocket to Mach 1.8 before the plane was turned over to NACA (Scott Crossfield took it to Mach 2 a year or so later). When Special Hobby did an all new tool 1/72 kit of the all rocket powered Skyrocket, it seemed as though this Revell kit was destined never to be built. The one piece clear window insert got scrounged to make a vintage kit complete when I sold it on eBay a couple years ago. Plus the scale and detail shortcomings meant that if I built it, I would either dedicate a lot of time to superdetailing it, or building a less than accurate model.

Fast forward to September 18. I was sitting at my computer desk pondering what I could do to build a model for the monthly IPMS Fort Crook model club meeting. The contest this month was "multi-engine" and my 1/72 Gemini Titan wouldn't be finished in time. I had a Revell TIE Fighter waiting in the wings, but it wasn't tripping my trigger at all as to date I had built four TIEs in various scales. Finally at about 8 PM I had an epiphany... the D-558-2 in its Revell kit form IS multi-engine as the original aircraft had both a Westinghouse turbojet engine and a rocket engine in the tail. So I went out to the storage bay and pulled out the Revell kit. Sure enough, it seemed to be right up my alley. It had very few parts, a very simple color scheme (white with a little black and silver in spots), very few decals and as I suspected, was indeed multi-engined with the jet intakes and exhaust being represented on the bottom of the model. So I gathered everything up I would need to bang the kit out and decided to sleep on it for a few hours, hoping that maybe the sleep would help to talk me out of doing something that would test my model building sanity.

On to part 2...

[Jay Chladek]

So, I went to bed at about 10:30 and woke up at about 4:45 AM. The Revell Skyrocket was still sitting on my workbench. A look at the instructions showed it would be a relatively easy build, if I made some sortcuts.

Building it gear down would add to the complexity a little, but the kit wheels weren't great and the gear bays were little more than barren recesses. Building it gear up meant I would have to put it on a stand, but the kit had none (although the SSP did include the original ball for the "Revelling" stand). A quick check of other kits yielded a Moebius/Aurora stand and the support arm looked like it would integrate with the Revell kit just fine after a little filing to open up the hole in the base of the fuselage.

So at 5:15 AM, I got to work. My first step was to paint the stand, which I did by shooting it with a coat of Tamiya Metallic Black spray and left it to dry in the basement while I got a bite to eat. If I was going to do this, I needed to load up on energy and keep my caloric intake up. After eating for about 30 minutes, I went back downstairs just before six and got to work at my table. To help keep me in the mood, I popped in a copy of "The Right Stuff" on my DVD player to have it running in the background as I worked.

For the next three hours as I watched the fictionalized exploits of Yeager, Crossfield, Glenn, Grissom and Cooper, I set to work. This build harkened back to when I would spend a night or two as a kid building models at the kitchen table. If I was motivated, I would work on into the late hours of the evening putting stuff together and painting as I went. This build would be a little different as my intention was to try and address the seams and make a decent attempt at the paintjob. For a 1950s vintage kit, this model went together very well. I sanded off the raised decal placement markings and thankfully the recessed splits were so deep that I didn't damage any of them during the sanding.

So work progressed with the tailplane trapped in the fuselage, left wing and right wing. I used Ambroid Proweld for my build and things dried quick enough that I was able to tackle the seams on the model easily. It took a bit of fiddling to get the wing positioning about right and as the credits rolled on "The Right Stuff" I had a built Skyrocket on my table with most of the seams addressed. About 20 minutes later, I took it to the sink and scrubbed the model with a toothbrush to get the sanding residue off. After it was dry, I took it into the basement to shoot on a layer of primer over the next hour or so.

The primer stage went well. A couple minor flaws were addressed as I encountered them (such as an upper wing root that didn't look all that clean) and it was back and fourth from the basement to the workbench to fix problems, re-primer those spots, then re-check. After my final fixes, I took it back into the basement, shot a little more primer in spots and while it was drying I took a nap for about an hour and a half. This was just before 11:00 AM.

At a little before 1:00 PM, I woke up and checked the model. The primer was rock hard and my fixes... while not perfect... worked well enough. The stand was also nice and dry as the Tamiya paint did its magic. It was time to paint the model. I was on the fence about which paint I would use as flats dry quick, yet can cause problems with decal adhesion. Glosses potentially take longer to dry, but Tamiya sprays dry nice and quick so I selected "Pure White" gloss for the paintjob. So, 20 minutes later the model was painted and I waited about about 45 minutes for it to dry before the next step.

It was a little after 2:30 and I had about three hours before I had to go to the meeting. The Skyrocket was nice and glossy white (a little thin in spots, but good at a glance) and the paint felt rock hard to the touch. My choice was a good one. So I took it into my room and masked off the black anti-glare panel and the intakes and sprayed them flat black. When dry, I masked off the nose probe and painted it Floquil Old Silver. I also tried to spray the cockpit interior black and ran into trouble as some water droplets leftover from my two model washing sessions (before and after primer) leaked out. But the results were at least satisfactory. With the detail paint dry, I used Microscale Micro Krystal Klear in the windows to represent clear transparencies. Things didn't go perfect here as the big windows were maybe just a tick too big for the limits of the glue and the small rectangular windows caused some minor problems as well. I let them dry a little before adding the decals.

I found a couple pictures in my Ginter Skyrocket book showcasing Skyrocket #2 after it had been delivered to NACA featuring just the national insignias on the fuselage and a pair of red white and blue NACA symbols on the tail. I had the proper logos in an old Cutting Edge sheet and choosing this scheme meant I only had to deal with a grand total of FOUR decals, compared to the eight decals I would have to add if I did the kit in its supplied markings with the "NAVY" titles and with the aircraft serial number. I got all the decals on and down with solvent by about 5:00 PM, a little under an hour before the deadline.

A final step was to take a fine line black pen with a .005 tip and run it through the panel line recesses to pop them out. I ran into a couple small problems here where I missed, but it worked for the most part. Admittedly there are flaws on the model and it probably won't win any contests. But I am happy with the results of my 13 hour model build. At least the major seams were addressed and on the stand it looks great!

The model survived its trip to the club meeting safely and looked good on the contest table. It didn't win because there were A LOT of entries, but everyone else did a doubletake when I told them I finished it in 13 hours. The Krystal Klear windows were still drying and a little white in spots by the end of the meeting. Here I am a day later and one of the small windows is STILL not quite dry!

So there you have it, one Revell 1/65 Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket finished out of the box (except for the stand) in less than a day. There are some minor things I can fix on it yet and indeed if I wanted to I could strip a couple areas down to fix some of the sink marks in the fuselage around the nose (I fixed a couple on the wings and rear fuselage during construction). But, she looks good done and gave me a nice trip down memory lane as I tapped into that youthful determination I had as a kid to build a new "toy" and fly it around the room. Will I ever tackle a similar project, I don't know. By the end of the night, I was very fatigued and crawled right into bed when I got home. But I am just as proud of getting this model done as I am of finishing a contest winner and it goes into a place of honor in my model display case now.

[jester292]

Nice! I like the descritpion of the building process! Thanks for sharing with us.

Aaron