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SR-71 Hasegawa 1/72


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So I haven't been modeling much thru hunting season and the Holidays and decided to kick off 2015 with one of my childhood favorites, the Blackbird.

I built the old Testors/Italeri 1:48 kit a couple of times back in the day. Great subject but the kit had its drawbacks. I decided this time around to build the best kit available and focus on the paint job. All black can be a challenge.

Here's the kit. I found it for a song on Ebay. This is the History kit which includes an extensive decal sheet.

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Edited by toadwbg
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Kit is smartly and precisely engineered, which I love me about some Hasegawa EDIT: Academy! The top and bottom fusalage halves hide the major seams, which fit great.

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Edited by toadwbg
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Dumb question:

How come the box says Academy while you say it's a Hasegawa kit?

Is it a reboxed Hasegawa kit sold by Academy??

Holy Cow! My error. Thanks for catching it.

Another error, I meant to post this at the in-progress forums. I'll contact the mods.

Edited by toadwbg
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It's the only SR-71 kit with recessed panel lines.

This here should still be valid:

http://www.72scale.com/aircraft/Lockheed/SR-71.htm

Too bad the Tamiya petition has run its course! I know there are accuracy issues with all the current 1/72 kits, but the Academy one looks pretty decent...

Anyway, this will be one interesting project! :thumbsup:

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Enjoy your build the decals in the Academy history boxing are excellent.

As for accuracy..well the chine is over a meter..yes a meter to narrow. Thats almost 4 feet in imperial speak.

I bought the Academy kit for the decals alone.

The only decently sized and shaped SR's are from Italeri.

Both the 48th and 72nd kits shape out quite well and the chines are a little narrow by IIRC about 6" so Have the correct Habu look from the front.

The Monogram kit is fine till you get to the front twenty feet then looks nothing like Any SR-71 ever born to this earth.

Pity the bestest and fastest and badest aircraft ever to see the light of day has been treated so poorly by everyone except Italeri and even then its a late 70's tooling.

Hope the new guys from Turkey do her right!

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Hope the new guys from Turkey do her right!

Do enlighten me, which guys from Turkey?

Great job so far mate. I'm building the 1/48 version now and I have the Revell kit in the stash too. Gotta get an Italeri kit too...

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The SR-71 is fab!!! :worship:/>/> It was amazing to see it in person while it was still in service! :woot.gif:/>/> Have somewhere the Hase kit built some 20 years ago with resin undercarriage bays. It was fun!

Best regards

Gabor

Yea, I :wub: the thing! For me, the greatest flying machine ever. I'm making a rare pilgrimage to Duxford in May, where I hope to see the beast up close.

Just wondering in light of previous comments, do both Hasegawa and Academy toolings have recessed panel lines? Also who produced resin u/c bays, and are these still available?

I have the Italeri kit in a drawer somewhere; it may be the best 1/72 version for shape but the plastic is sooo hard and brittle. So far I have bought about three Eduard p/e sets in the vain hope of getting a grip on it one day, but invariably end up thieving the lovely surface panels (grills, vents etc.) for other projects... :bandhead2:

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Edited by ChippyWho
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So my next dilemma is how to display this model:

1) in-flight gear up, on a stick

2) gear down sitting

Of course the Blackbird looks sexier than most just sitting on its gear on the ground. But I HATE landing gear and taking up all that shelf space. I took all those detailed pics of the landing gear to do some detailing but in 1/72 you don't see much and it's hidden when sitting anyway!

Alternatively the Blackbird could be posed in-flight, I've done several of my kits this way and it's always a very dynamic display. Problem is that the Blackbird is a bit long and thus has a poor center of gravity for putting on a stick. Since this is 1/72 it might mount OK on a 3/8-1/2" plastic rod for support with a sturdy base. But where to drill into the bottom fuselage to stick it? On single engined jets I've stuck a rod up the tailpipe but this doesn't look right on a twin-engined aircraft and it hides those beautiful puppies....

This is a bit of an engineering problem. Good thing I'm an engineer.

Edited by toadwbg
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Just wondering in light of previous comments, do both Hasegawa and Academy toolings have recessed panel lines?

The Academy kit has recessed panel lines, this is one of the reasons I went with Academy. The fit is very good so no panel lines shall be lost!

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Here's some pics I took last year of the Blackbird on display at the AF museum near Pensacola, FL

Any pics of the tail? IIRC this is the "big tail" bird with the articulated (tilting) tail.

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Also who produced resin u/c bays, and are these still available?

Hi ChippyWho,

The SR-71 was built for our modeling publication somewhere in late 1980 very early 90's. I have to look it up. It was an out of box built with just few extras, one of which was the main gear bay that I produced and made some resin copies of it. It was never for sale (just as most of my things, they are one off development masters). I have found the kit which was in long term storage in a custom made wooden box. Will make some photos to show what was done. The kit build was fun, as far as I remember it was a Hasegawa/Minicraft kit and it had recessed panel lines. Most addition apart from the undercariage bay was with the paint job (a lot of painted detail, stencils . . . based on photos taken of an active bird).

Best regards

Gabor

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The Academy kit has recessed panel lines, this is one of the reasons I went with Academy. The fit is very good so no panel lines shall be lost!

Ah, thanks for the info, Sir -and the superb photos! :thumbsup:

Gabor, that sounds like a great project. Certainly, if you can sort out some photos I'm sure we'll all be suitably impressed! Cheers.

Edited by ChippyWho
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