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XB-70 Valkyrie Italeri 1/72 terrible kit of great plane


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Hello Everybody,

one day I saw a picture of probably the most beautiful plane in the history of aviation - XB-70 Valkyrie. It was "in flight" with wings folded:

 

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That moment I decide I must build one in exactly same position - in flight with wings-fold.

 

So here it is:

 

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At the beginnig I planned clean plane as for experimental one then I saw picutres that showed it used to be really tired at a time:

 

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So this is my final build. The kit is infamous 1/72 Italeri kit (ERTL one before). This is truly a horrible kit, with few really huge parts extremely difficult to snap together, lots of sanding etc... So it was like 2 months battle, few times I nearly gave up but finally we have a draw:

 

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The kit is reallllllly big - here with 48 Spit:

 

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Here with other 72ers (Revells Transal and Blohm&Voss):

 

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And here with my 48ers - it is really dominating the whole pack:

 

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Edited by Pablo Lewy
Doubled picture
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30 minutes ago, Sabrejet said:

Looks a good kit from what I've seen: why terrible?

The kit is very old, like old good Revells in 48.

Poor detailing, raised panel lines but the biggest problems are a) the logic of the kit parts - you end up with tons of filler and b) the parts are really big with terrible match - lots of sanding, dry-runs etc.

So it asked me for a lot of efforts...

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5 hours ago, TallBlondJohn said:

Beautifully made and posed. I have 2 of these in the stash - planning to do a test plane and a what-if. But not in a hurry!
 

Wish somebody would do one in 1/200 plastic though

Well there is one in 48 😆 difficult to imagine the size of this beast...

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Yes, the XB-70 is a gorgeous plane, one of my favorites, and you’ve done an incredible job on your build!

 

I have the AMT kit, which I believe is the “original “ Italeri boxing but won’t build it not only for the reasons you mention but because of its huge size.  Instead I’ll give the smaller resin Anigrand kit a go.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

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Nice build!

 

I actually found mine easy to build; the trick is to add a few extra location tabs to force the parts into position. Built mine in aabout a week. Painting was however another issue, lots and lots of gloss white! 🙂

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According to "Valkyrie" by Jenkins & Landis the Air Force had North American working on a finish that was hoped to reduce radar return.  Two finishes were developed to be used depending on local temperature of the airframe.    Apparently it would have been opaque silver.  That would be easier than a NMF finish and a little less boring than all white of the prototypes.

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Very impressive build!

I never owned the kit, but I can believe what you say about it being hard to build.

That makes your work even more impressive.

The in-flight pose definitely accentuates its beauty.

Amazing work.

:clap:

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