X-15C

[Orne M]

Like minds.....

Contrail XB-70 AV-2 with Monogram X-15 Delta; never got around to adding boosters.

[kitnut617]

Whoa!! 

[PR19_Kit]

Orne,

The very fact that you completed a Contrail XB-70 makes you worthy of our fullest admiration! 

[Orne M]

I'm never one to dismiss admiration.  Tell the truth, the Contrail kit isn't the terror written up in places (the only thing that was problematic was the idea to use pressurized urethane foam to fill the upper fuselage - that stuff is almost impossible to clean up after it starts pouring out of the nozzle).  Wish I had known how to make molds at the time, would've built up a J-93 nozzle master and cast a set instead of using the VF parts.

[PR19_Kit]

Tell the truth, the Contrail kit isn't the terror written up in places.

You could have fooled me! 

I've had one for years, and I've had a look at it maybe 5-6 times since then. The vacs are so thin in place I can see through them! The vertical draw for the engine pod is so deep that they ran out of plastic doing mine and in a few places it's short moulded.

Luckily I have an AMT XB-70 now, so I may have to Whiff the Contrail one sometime.

[Joe C-P]

That works, very well!

[Orne M]

A couple techniques that might be helpful with the Contrail kit or any VF kit (mind you I manufacture some VF heavy kits so twenty years experience I'm drawing from):

Spacer bulkheads - 1/4 thick balsa plugs work great, easy to shape - for fuselage parts, strip styrene between those, and 'tabs' glued inside the edges to reinforce the seams; a thin film of resin poured inside fuselage cavities before assembly; sheet plastic glued inside wing-halves (even those thin 'For Sale' signs from the dollar store can hold shapes far better than you would think).

Sorry, trying not to hijack the thread.