Revell/Monogram 1/72 X-15A-2 (Pete Knight's record setting flight)

[Jay Chladek]

Posting another one I did very early in 2021 as one of my Covid lockdown builds. This is the 2006 Revell issue of the Monogram 1/72 X-15A-2, done up as the aircraft appeared for its last flight when Pete Knight set a speed record with it. The aircraft was covered with an ablative heat shield coating. It was pink in color, tended to come off in slivers and had an annoying habit of getting saturated with LOX, which could have "explosive" results. So the coating was covered in a flat white binder layer. The plane itself was a rebuild of X-15 ship #2, which was rebuilt following a bad crash on Mud Lake a few years earlier. A stretch was added to the fuselage along with provisions for two external fuel/oxidizer tanks which would allow the plane to achieve higher speeds than what it could with the original fuel supply.

 

While NASA did a good job applying the layer and adding a window eyelet to one side of the aircraft so the pilot could open the cover and have a clean window to see out for landing while the other one became opaque during the flight, they didn't put as much care into placement of the dummy scramjet on the ventral fin. So while Pete Knight reached speeds over 4,500 mph on that run, the scramjet produced a plasma spike which impinged on the ventral rudder at twice the temperature the aircraft's Inconel X structure could take. It blowtorched into the ventral fin area damaging critical systems in the process. The damage was so extensive that the plane was retired from flying. Today it is on display at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH.

 

The model was built essentially out of the box. I did carve up the standing pilot figure though so his head is visible inside the exposed cockpit window.  For this model, I tried an experimental technique. The original Monogram kits were molded in black while this one was molded in gray plastic. I did my best to maintain the raised panel lines during filling and sanding. After giving the model a layer of white primer/base coat, I gently rubbed on the raised panels with ultra thin grit polishing pads to expose the darker panel lines. In some areas, I used a mechanical pencil and fine line black pen to accent printed lines further. I did use black to represent areas on the jet that weren't covered by the heat shield covering, such as the tails and the area around the engine.

 

The external tanks were painted primarily in Tamiya shades (white, black and silver). The nose caps were painted in Model Master Fluorescent Red applied over a white basecoat. For the display stand to pick out the white letters, I sprayed them in flat white, then used a black pen to line in around the letters and give them a border. Once I had marked the black borders out far enough, I sprayed the rest of the stand in Mister Surfacer 1300 black. The NASA meatball decal came from my spares box and I applied it with a white glue mixture to help eliminate silvering over the rough texture of the stand.

 

Overall, I am happy with the project. If I can get my hands on a 1/72 Special Hobby X-15A-2 kit, I may add some of its decals for the white A-2 as it has a bit more stenciling than what the Monogram kit has. The layout on the 2006 Revell decal sheet is a little different from the Monogram one, but the artwork is the same.

 

 

I really like how the display stand turned out. And it displays the model at a nice angle.

 

 

This view showcases the lightly exposed panel lines. It can be done with the Monogram kit in black, but the gray works for a more subtle appearance I think. You can see the top of the tail painted in black.

 

 

The eyelet covering the left cockpit window is shown here. The black rudder and speedbrake splits were accented with a black pen.

 

 

The fuel dump pipes are somewhat visible. I drilled out their rear ends and made sure not to glue them on until the model was mostly done to prevent breakage. 

 

 

The stock display stand when painted up properly does the job quite nicely I think. The external tanks were glued on with white glue. This was done because the belly gluing surface is not the greatest and these tanks don't exactly fit flush. Plus I can pull them off at a later date if I need to.

 

Overall, very nice model. Sure the Special Hobby kit has more detail. But honestly, since the ablative coating obscured details on the aircraft anyway I would save a SH model for doing a black X-15 while the Monogram kit with its less complex details is better suited for the white one.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Jay Chladek

[Geoff M]

I have always liked the X-15 and wish there more kits of X planes available.  Yours looks really good.  Seem to be a lot of variations in such a small number of aircraft.  

Geoff M

Edited February 1, 2022 by Geoff M

[Jay Chladek]

On 2/1/2022 at 8:24 AM, Geoff M said:

I have always liked the X-15 and wish there more kits of X planes available.  Yours looks really good.  Seem to be a lot of variations in such a small number of aircraft.  

Geoff M

Given that every flight was to gather experiment data, there is a reason for that. All things considered though, most of the X-Planes have been covered in kit form from the smaller run companies such as Special Hobby and the like. If only Dragon would repop the ones they did in 1/144, including kit versions of models they ONLY offered as pre-builds, such as the X-1A, X-1E and a couple of the X-15 variants.