SHADAir SST Seagull X-ray

[SJPONeill]

This is a garage kit made by a chap in Auckland that I bought off Trademe. At the time, I thought the SST was like an executive jet like a Lear or Gulfstream and that the model was about 1/72 but only realised how big it was watching the series and paying a bit more attention. It's not gone from 1/72 to 1/100 and is now holding around 1/144. I have a vague memory of acquiring a small scale SKY1 with one of the Imai UFO vehicle kits and that might make a nice stablemete for the SST.


The model is pretty basic and is cast in soft resin that is almost soapy in texture. There's no surface detail and part of the engine fairing was snapped off and lost in transit.


The colours are white with red trim - of course, no decals or templates are provided - and the windows will be back, probably under a clear resin layer.

The nose is molded to be fitted in the supersonic inline position but there is no windscreen deflector and I think it will look better in the deflected drooped position, even though this will require some minor surgery for a neat fit to the main fuselage.

It wasn't my plan to strat anything new but it was too humid last night airbrush and this was just sitting at the top of the ready-use stack and I thought I might remove the pouring stubs and then I notice the leftovers from the Italeri 1/72 B-58 in the next box over and thought that might be a nice donor for an undercarriage and then I realised that the wing was too thin to ever hold the undercarriage as shown in the series so I did some quick measuring and sketching and decided I could do the undercarriage if I made the wing just a little thicker and next thing you know it was kinda like this:





Tonight I have fixed the skin to the top of the wing and both wings are residing under large bricks to hold them flat while the glue cures overnight...

[beany]

Wow - that's an interesting find. I loved the UFO series and the vehicles it used. I used to have the Project Enterprises die-casts of the UFO, the Interceptor, Skydiver (with detachable Sky 1) and a SHADO Mobile. Unfortunately financially challenging times a while back saw me having to sell all except the mobile.

As a stable mate for that I'd recommend the IMAI Sky 1 kit. I can be turned into a reasonable copy of the studio models. I moved the tail forward on mine and one day will do something about the rocket pod nozzles as the kit ones are very toy-like. The body requires a bit of filler to fill the locating holes for the wheels - it actually comes with part to build it as a motorised toy!

I will be watching your build with great interest mate!

[SJPONeill]

Funny you should mention the Imai Sky1, trotted that out tonight as well to try the cheap airbrush with Tamiya primer.

I've taken some licence with it and am incorporating some F-8 Crusader and MiG-29 resin detail parts into it to display it landed (one of the episodes mentioned this was possible, or might have been one of the comics).

Your Sky1 looks awesome and I'll be using it as a reference for mine.

Also slowly chipping away at the Imai Mobile, Interceptor and Joe's Car, think the smaller SPV and Spectrum patrol car are also stashed away somewhere too with the Spectrum helicopter and jet..

[DavidWomby]

I am a huge Anderson/Meddings fan, Simon. Great to see there's a kit of the Shadair SST. I'll watch with keen interest.

I have the Spectrum Helicopter part built on the workbench now. This may give me the boost I needed to finish it.

David

[Tarkas]

I've taken some licence with [the Imai Sky 1] and am incorporating some F-8 Crusader and MiG-29 resin detail parts into it to display it landed (one of the episodes mentioned this was possible, or might have been one of the comics).

In the first episode (Identified), Peter Carlin shoots down a UFO, sees that there's an alien survivor -- or at least a body -- and returns with the recovered alien to SHADO HQ. It could be inferred from the timescale that he flew there, landed and met up with the recovery crew, or (perhaps more likely) he returned to Diver 1 and flew back with the alien from the crash site. It's difficult to say, given that the time between the shoot-down and the nedical examination of the alien passes at the Speed of Plot .

Interestingly, the Gerry Anderson website, together with its accompanying YouTube channel, has just released one of its Tech Talk videos about SkyDiver. Despite the name, these vids are not very technical, but this one does "answer" one of the great unsolved questions about Sky 1 and its sisters: how do they re-attach to the Diver submarine? According to the clip, the Sky fighter lands on the surface of the ocean, opens sub-like ballast tanks and sinks under the water to a suitable depth, after which the Diver approaches from the rear and docks with the fighter. It's a reasonable concept, though to my mind it's a bit too reliant on calm seas , but the relevant point to this discussion is that this launch-and-recovery methods means that there would be no need for a conventional undercarriage at all!

It would also explain why Sky 1 is so big for a single-seat fighter, especially the stubby fuselage -- a lot of the space is either ballast tanks or air tanks with which to blow them out!

[beany]

I'm not saying I'm a UFO fan but...
I can't find any references to wheels (or on-shore landings) for Sky 1 (or Sky 2, Sky 3 or Sky 4 or the 4 spares of the same nomenclature kept on-shore) in the books I have.

There are some images below of the SST that you may find useful Simon.











Cheers
Al.

[SJPONeill]

Thanks for those scans - I might have to hunt down the books now...

I think the reason that questions like how does Sky1 marry up with SkyDiver were never covered in the series or cointenporary media like TV Action, Countdown etc was simply that they had no idea. A lot of the more recent 'data' is simply made up to satisfy a commercial demand and are not necessarily canon. For example the very nive drawings of the SST above have a different undercarriage than the actuall Seagull X-Ray used in the series. That had a single narrow door over the gear leg and a large door that opened on retraction to accept the wheels 9 luckily for me and I'm not sure I'm up for building let alone detailing large open gera bays...(for all that I still like to look at any pictures of this genre)

I can't remember where it was, I think a one liner in one episode that said that Sky 1 was at a particula rland location. It was a late night rerun and a day or so after I'd acquired the Imai kit. It was obviously meant to be and not long after my supplier of choice had some great specials on 1/48 resin sets - again menat to be and I also got a Lightning cockpit for the Interceptor that arrived at the same time.

[Impisi]

very interesting stuff

[SJPONeill]

OK, I got that wrong. I made my own screen snaps of Seagull XRay from the episode in which it appears...I have been using this as my main reference but it is quite grainy when blown up and it does look like a narrow single gear leg with a narrow bay door for the leg length. The reflection from the gear leg looked to me like a long narrow door and the other shapes around it I thought were part of the rear fuselage.


But it's actually a narrow single gear leg with a delicate retraction strut and massively and unnecessarily wide bay doors. The only part of the bay that needs to be any size is the space in the fuselage where the wheels actually go and even that doesn't need to to be open except when the gear is retracting


Landing gear leg bay door.


Wheel bay door open.


Wheel bay

So I'm going to continue to apply a little license with a long narrow bay for the gear leg and a closed bay for the wheels (which woiuld snap open on retraction).

Regards scale, I had hoped for this to be a 1/72 stablemate with the Spectrum Passenger Jet in the Gulf IV class but looking at these shots, the SST is much larger with a ton of head room....




The interior won't be visible so there won't be any scale cues on the finished model but for now it's hanging in there as 1/144...

[SJPONeill]

Before our latest lockdown kicked in at midnight last night, we have been really busy most nights so I have only been able to get little bits of hands-on modelling done. Each night though, I have done something and most of that has been working my way around the wings, using CA to fix the new wing skin to the orginal wings...


This is the last section pegged in place for the night, using the last of my $2 shop CA (6 x 2g tubes for $2)...will be ready to start filling and shaping in the morning...

[beany]

We've been in effective lockdown since well before Christmas and the novelty is really wearing off, in spite of the extra modelling time it provides! I also use the cheapo Poundshop superglues and often find them invaluable on stubborn parts, especially when used with a bottle of accelerant. I'm very excited about this build so look forward to seeing you progress Simon.

[SJPONeill]

Here's a post on the SST from the model designer and manufacturer, includes contact details and link to FB page: https://modelermagic.com/ufo-shadair-ss ... an-walker/ Not sure if he is still producing them but did have others when I bought mine in 2018...

[SJPONeill]

Using that old Milliput along the wing seams was a bit of a bust. Even though the two parts blended into a uniform colour, the putty cured into a hard but crumbly mess much of which flaked out when I started to sand.


I've sanded around the edges and reduced any overlap of the new plasticard upper wing skin. Again just waiting on some filler to arrive so that I can shape the leading and trailing edges and fettle the wing/fudelage join.

The plan is to make up some templates for the control surfaces and either scribe these in or use a fine tip pencil (followed immediately by a sealing layer) to add this detail.Windows will be UV cured resin with a black backing layer.

[DavidWomby]

Simon, the pencil is probably the way it was done on the studio model!

David

[SJPONeill]

No pix yet but tried applying the Vallejo plastic putty this evening. I like the idea of the direct application from the bottle. I think it was some Testors putty I had years ago that came with a selection of application heads and I think I still have those - would be really handy for applying directly into tight corners etc.

The putty seems to smooth very easily, as someone said, with a finger and I shall be interested to see how it sands come morning...