Nathan Dempsey Nice work Dave. Interesting subject too.

Skywalker Looks good! How well did it go together?

Dave Burgess Quite nicely. I used a lot of decals from my spare decals box. I couldn't find any company producing an RCAf decal sheet for the Choctaw. The '633' was hand painted because I don't have an ALPS printer and didn't have any numbers that size and white in my spare decals box. The 'RESCUE' was laser printed on white decal paper and the 'ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE' was from my Canadian decals supplies, laid down over a white decal stripe. The lightning bolt and RCAF roudel were also from my Canadian decals supplies (CanForce decals, ~1980)

Skywalker How well did this kit fit?

Dave Burgess I had no problems with it. A little putty, as can be expected with most resin kits. Also, the lg are fragile, and one of them is molded on upside down (i.e. the wheel is on the top, not the bottom end of the strut - look at the pictures I posted). Other than that, it was a pretty easy build. I hand-painted the camo scheme rather than try to mask and airbrush. Turned out better than I expected.

Juergen Klinglhuber cool - I love your X plane collection.

JOHN THOMAS Cool subject

Dave Burgess Juergen: ... and I'm still adding to it! I've got a line on an X-25 (autogiro), and an X-27 (Lockheed CL-1200); I've also got an X-36, X-45, and X-50 in transit (caught up in Customs at the moment). The ones I'm having problems with, are the X-6 (too big for my display case anyway), the X-16 (Sharkit), X-21 (Sharkit conversion), and X-44 (Sharkit), the X-33 and X-37 (Fantastic Plastic); all of them are O.O.P. Sharkit also does an X-14, which Renaud says he's going to be re-releasing this year (holding my breath). Other than the ones mentioned, I have almost all of theX-Planes from X-1 through X-29, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of the ones from X-30 up. Since I based my collection on Jay Miller's book 'The X-Planes: X-1 to X-29', released in 1982, I could call it quits now and call it 'mission accomplished'! (but I wont...)

Skywalker X marks the spot! Great subject.

Alex K I was admiring (again) your X-Planes collection and - (maybe a silly) question: what about the small X-23 unmanned lifting body?

Dave Burgess The X-23 Prime. If you can find me a model of it...

Guy Rump great paint job

Maciej Bellos It turned out great! Well done Dave!

JOHN THOMAS Very nice

Dave Burgess Well, that completes the collection of X-Planes I have in my stash, but I still have a few more ordered and coming.

Mike Fuller Cool!

Dave Burgess This little bugger fought me all the way!

First, in the process of decalling, I inadvertently knocked the model on the floor with my elbow. Fortunately, none of the fiddly bits were on yet, so no damage. Not so lucky with my left hand. In trying to grab the plane on the way down, I caught instead, my exacto knife, blade down (nice sharp #11, of course!) in the middle of my palm. Good thing I was wearing my latex gloves. The knife buried itself about 1/4" and nicked a major vein in my hand. In the 30s it took me to get to the bathrom for a bandage, I had a glove-full of blood. I had to take off the glove to put on a bandage. I got it off, and put on a compression bandange. Then I surveryed the bathroom. It looked like a scene from Midsomer Murders - blood everywhere!

The next day, while handling the bird to glue the canopy on, I nudged the front gear (very gently), and broke the nose wheel off the lg strut (it was molded as one piece) The resin gear are very brittle an break easily, but I'll take the blame for this one. In an effort to add abit more realism, I had drilled out the space between the scissor mechanism which joins the two halves of the lg strut. That little bit of extra resin would have made the gear a little stronger.

After successfully gluing the wheel back on and strengthening the joint as much as I could, I decided to put it aside for the superglue to fully cure. I rested it in a plastic yoghut tub to keep the weight off the lg, and went to move it over to my spare table. I was concentrating so much on the model, I didn't notice the chair and tripped. The tub left my hand and the X-31 went for its inaugural flight, promptly deconstructing itself on the floor, separating itslelf from the canopy, all three lg, and the thrust vanes. After a little cry, I put it aside for a day.

Finally I re-attached the broken gear, re-inforcing the joints with a SECOND coat of superglue, re-attached the canopy and thrust vanes, and set it aside to cure. Only then, I realized that the ejecttion seat had ejected itself in the crash (thank goodness SOMETHING was working right! At least the pilot was safe). At this point, I'm not touching it again. If you look carefully at the canopy, you'll see there's nowhere for the pilot to sit, but it's not so noticeable in my display case.

Łukasz Gliński Many thanks for sharing the story. I used to think that's only me being so clumsy

Skywalker They don't call it blood, sweat and tears for nothing. Great to see that you persevered. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who has to fight for a model to come out. Nice to hear I'm not alone. Keep up the great work.

Juergen Klinglhuber following

Ben M A rare beast! What is that around the rocket nozzle?

Nathan Dempsey Oooh this is a great subject. Very similar to the X-37.

Julian Herrero aka Yuri Like it , good work

Juergen Klinglhuber Dave - I am in,...cool Project.

Łukasz Gliński What an oddity, I have to follow

Dave Burgess As you can probably gather from the pictures, the fit on this model was absolutely terrible!

The forward fuselage was narrower than the rear rear, by the thickness of the resin; the top and bottom halves of the rear fuselage didn't fit together due to warping of the sides - I had to insert a spacer inside the lower part to push the sides out so they'd line up;

The front halves of the fuselage top & bottom were not flat, but concave, forcing me to use a bunch of filler to flatten them out;

The canopy was too short to cover the cockpit opening, and the top half of the rear fuselage, the front of which was supposed to cover the wing root/swivel, was molded at the wrong angle. There should have been about a 14 degree slope, but there wasn't, forcing me to cut it off and install it at the correct angle later.

Lining everything up was made more difficult by the fact that the forward section of the fuselage was split vertically, and the rear section was split horizontally, making it much more difficult to remove some of the width in the rear section so that it would line up with the forward section.

In retrospect, I should have taken the two rear fuselage pieces, and cut them in half lengthwise so that I could have sanded them down to match the width of the forward fuselage, but that seem like WAY too much work. In the end, I just puttied the seam and tried to feather in the join between rear & forward fuselage. I'm hoping it won't be too noticable when I'm finished. Only time will tell!

Peter Hardy Had your work cut out for you there Dave! More filler than my wife's car!

Stefan Schacht nice start, count me in

Łukasz Gliński Sounds like a real challenge

Ben M Watching and hoping to be inspired to use more filler to solve my problems rather than losing mojo.

Juergen Klinglhuber Quite some efforts you had to put in. But it turned out great ! congrat's

Bryn Crandell Looks Great!!

Dave Burgess I was particularly pleased with this one. It was a real challenge to mask and paint such long, thin stripes without any paint bleed. The only disappointment was that the canopy was VERY thin (good), and I broke it in half (bad) along the top seam while handling it during masking and painting. Even worse, I dropped one of the two halves and couldn't find it. However, it turned out to be a bit of a bonus, as the r.h.s of the model gives you an unobstructed view of the nicely detailed cockpit!

Hint: If you tackle this paint scheme, do the red in three stages: 1) fuselage bottom; 2: wings; and 3) fuselage top/vertical stab; It's much less tricky to mask that way, you'll have more places to hold it without sticking a finger in wet paint, and it might actually take less time to mask it

I got the nice clean lines by misting 4-5 VERY thin coats of red, waiting 15-30 minutes between coats to let it dry a bit. After the last coat, I left it for a couple of hours to dry, before applying one final, slightly heavier coat, to get a nice glossy finish. Before painting, I went over the tape a couple of times to make sure it hadn't lifted anywhere.

Cuajete Well done! It's a shame about the canopy.

Dave Burgess Well, like I said, it was a bit of a bonus in disguise. Just wish I'd spent a bit more time in the cockpit, now that I can see it. I've got a whole sheet of 1:72 instrument panel decals I could have brightened up the instrument panel with...

At least with the canopy, if I can ever get a replacement, it would be easy to pry off the old one and put a new one on.

Cuajete Maybe you can make one by vacuum technique.

Dave Burgess I could.. but it's more work than I'm willing to take on. I'm 65 and I have at least 100 kits in my stash. So time is not on my side (do the math!)

Cuajete

Calvin Gifford Very nice! Love the background too!

Juergen Klinglhuber Nice & exotic model. I like it.

Torsten Wendt Nice build and finish

Eduardo Arguijo I have been wondering arround that kit for two years now, and still havent past on the sanding and rescribing phase. What a little piece of $h!%, like all the mach 2 kits...... hope to finish it some day.

Łukasz Gliński Following

Łukasz Gliński Following

Jeramy Boileau Following

Alex K Nice! I always liked the Lifting Bodies - I was kind of fascinated when I first learned about them on the occasion of a Scale Models International review of the Eagle's Talon vacforms, back in 1985... Nice to see them here... On a more general note: Great work on your entire X-planes collection - thumbs up!

Dave Burgess Still to finish: Bell X-1D (completes my Bell X-Plane family); X-15A-2 (two versions); X-18; X-20 Dynasoar. X-24A & X-24B; X-31; X-34; X-38; X-47; After that, I have the Dougles D-558-3 (Skyflash); M2-F2, HL-10, and Have Blue to complete (currently under construction as well).

Dave Burgess No, that's the M2-F1, precursor to the M2-F2, the one that got it's 15 seconds of fame in the Six Million Dollar Man series intro. While Similar to the X-24A in appearance there are also some subtle differences.

Łukasz Gliński What a cool oddity, looks like Battlestar Galactica fighter

Jeramy Boileau Awesome, great looking kit!

Maciej Bellos Wow, I didn't know this kit existed!!! Looking forward to it!

Juergen Klinglhuber Very cool. I am following,.....

Torsten Wendt , count me in

JOHN THOMAS Very cool

JD I'll be the first to comment. This is a labor of love, well done.

Chris Greathouse Wicked!!! I'm on board!

Torsten Wendt The old goodie, count me in

Dave Burgess Bought the kit, and started building it, in 1978. Hoping to finish it in 2020. I think 42 years is long enough...

Peter Hardy Some builds can take a while Dave. 42 years isn't that uncommon, I think?

Jozef Goos verry nice

Chris Greathouse Isn't 42 the answer to the universe? Perfect time to return

Nathan Dempsey Nice lighting. Looks great so far

Dave Burgess Chris, that's why I want to finish it in 2020. 42 IS the answer! (Now, if they'd just do a model of the Vogon Contstructor ship, I'd be all ovewr it!)

Christopher Mullins I used to have that when I was a youngster, built it, broke, it, if I would have only know then what I know now

Stefan Schacht nice

Dave Burgess Was going to take some pics of it lit up, but I can't find the right power brick!

Torsten Wendt

Ben M Fantastic build!

Łukasz Gliński Lovely!

gorbygould Nice job.

Torsten Wendt Interesting! Looking forward what make with this good oldie

Chris Greathouse Sign me up for this one when it going from Idea to project. Very interesting shape.

Dave Burgess I've got to acquire the model first. I e-mailed Sharkit, and this one's out of production.

Chris Greathouse Good luck!

Chris Greathouse Interesting shape, I'm on for the ride.