Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird **FINISHED**

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JamesPerrin
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Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird **FINISHED**

Post by JamesPerrin »

I've been itching to start this for a while and has been marked on my white board as one of my intended builds for the year. Not a lot of bench time combined with other more involved projects took their toll.

This tooling is ~3yrs old and essentially replaces the ancient ARII kit in this scale. At about 8" in 1/144 it's the perfect size as the Blackbird is all about the overall shape and not fancy camo or exposed cockpits. It being a Dragon kit expect superb surface detail and the old dumb mistake. I believe this is one of their kits that you could also build made up and painted - but where's the fun in that :???:

Very few pieces, the undercarriage makes up more than 50% of the part count. Instructions are one side of A5 with paint and decalling on the other. A small but crowded set of decals is supplied. I've a Speciality Press SR-71 scrapbook full of useful photos covering all the members of the Blackbird family. As there were many subtle differences I need to make sure I', looking at a SR-71A and even then it appears some aircraft had shorter exhaust cans.

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The single piece cockpit suffices, though I replaced the chunky stick with wire and added the head rests. These are bright red and are just about the only thing that can been seen through the tiny windows.

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With the hole for a stand (not supplied) the upper and lower fuselage halves can be glued together. Fit is pretty good though it is worth fettling here and there as I always think at this scale you need to halve you tolerances compared to 1/72. Clamping helped close up most gaps though underneath the nose fillets needed a smear of filler. As the top surface wraps around the edges of the aircraft all the seams are hidden underneath anyway.

The intakes are poor the edge is think and doesn't line up top and bottom, the worst being they are not round but slabbed sided! There was little I could do to remedy this with happening on some tubing that was exactly the right diameter so I made the best of it and pressed on.

The rear engine inlets and reheat gubbins are neat single pieces that sits ahead of the exhausts. These along with the intake opening were sprayed black firstly and then the reheat picked out in steel.

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Exhausts had there inside brush painted with some excellent Vallejo Metal Color Burnt Exhaust. Though these are a very good (expensive) airbrushable metal acrylic they appear to brush paint well too. The shock cones have 3 different sized pegs which ensures the are installed correctly.

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DavidWomby
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by DavidWomby »

Nice one. Such a great shape.

David
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by celt »

Like it.
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by DavidWomby »

James, just remember NO purple paint on this one, eh. :lol:

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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by gnomemeansgnome »

Nice.
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by JamesPerrin »

This build is playing ball, but despite best intention not to start tweaking anything I was unable to stop myself.

The nicely moulded undercarriage parts have one noticeable flaw, the oleo leg's scissor on the nose leg is moulded with the gap between it but the main undercarriage scissors are not. So out with the drill bits and pointy knife.

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I sat down with a notebook and carefully noted the colours of various bits of the undercarriage, famously the walls of the main wheels are silver grey as they had a metallic weave to protect them from heat and stress IIRC. Blacks were lightened with tans and grey to create (probably too) subtle variations. One nice thing I found was that the legs were moulded to the same level.

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Another of Dragon's hiccups is that they show the main inner doors closed when the undercarriage is down. Now usually the mistake is the other way around but I could not find a single picture of a Blackbird with doors up. The large flanges which help position the doors closed was removed and some detail was added to match the outer doors.

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Already it's time to paint the fuselage!
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by MarkyM607 »

Looking good. IIRC the wheels were impregnated with aluminium or some silvery metal.
Hoping to return to modelling sometime this year!! :lol:
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by MarkyM607 »

Or maybe it was magnesium.. :grin:
Hoping to return to modelling sometime this year!! :lol:
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by JamesPerrin »

The windows on the SR-71 are tiny, in 1/144 they minuscule! I decided to pass on my normal method of masking using Tamiya tape and pull out some Bare metal foil. As this is very thin it works much better for such tiny items and very clearly shows the frames, I've barely touched my stash of BMF for it's intended purpose so should probably use it more for masking.

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My original intention was to prime & base coat in one by lightning some Alclad Gloss Black primer with their Grey microfiler except that the grey coagulated on hitting the back! :shock: very weird they are both lacquerers so I@m not sure why they didn't mix. Plan B Hu 33 matt black with some Hu 87 steal grey. The later has a bluish tone which I wanted, not because of the urban myth that the SR-71 is a very dark blue (all the photo's I've seen show it very black when new and fades to dark grey), but I wanted to get away from a monotone palette so I've been altering my black with light tans and creams. The blue is not noticeable in the finish. Some touch ups to do and then I'll start to weather and modulate it with lighter mixes.

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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by iggie »

That's looking really good, and the music choice is pretty good too!
Best wishes

Jim
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by PGAS »

Very nice James! Your colours look spot on to me. I have this kit too and I found the intake disappointing as well. It is partially built in a box somewhere but your build might make me take it out again.
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by JamesPerrin »

Progress has been made, quite a bit in fact. I shaded and weathered the panels using various shades of grey ( black + buff) all of which appears to disappears under a coat of gloss. In my quest to find a decent sprayable gloss Tamiya X-20 beat Vallejo by a nose, I acquired a Lindberg X-3 Stilleto as a test target for which being long and thin means it can be shoved on the window sill out of the way. I had a long decalling session mainly because the decals were crammed onto a tiny sheet with barely any room between them. The long wing no walk lines were in two parts each the two U shapes and the rear being interlocked and encompassing other decals, :roll: I've also replaced the pitot with one filed from brass rod, there is a very small side appendage which I thought about trying to solder on for ~1ns as it is barely visible in most photos.

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Just the final matt coat and weathering to be applied before fitting the undercarriage.
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by Dazzled »

Really nice James. I wasn't aware that there was an SR-71 available in 1/144th.
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by JamesPerrin »

Dazzled wrote:Really nice James. I wasn't aware that there was an SR-71 available in 1/144th.
Ta Daz, it could be Cold War SIG's for a brown envelope stuffed full of readies :grin:
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Re: Dragon 1/144 SR-71A Blackbird

Post by Eric Mc »

Nice video - shame about the plane.

Only joking. I love both.
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