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1953 - D-558-2 Skyrocket: Scott Crossfield breaks Mach 2


billn53

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For my first ever entry into a BM group build, my project will be the Douglas D-558-2 "Skyrocket" flown by Scott Crossfield on November 20, 1953. On that flight, Crossfield broke the Mach 2 "barrier", reaching Mach 2.005 in a shallow dive. It was the only Mach 2 flight the Skyrocket ever made. A few weeks later, I was born.

 

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The kit is very simple, consisting of one sprue plus a clear canopy, resin wheels, some PE, and decals:

 

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I'll be building this as an in-flight model, so won't need to worry about landing gear or cockpit details. That means, I only have about a dozen pieces to assemble. Which is good -- I might even finish before the group build deadline!

 

Links to some great videos are here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, here are some pics of the actual aircraft:

 

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Welcome aboard Billin and nice to see you’ve taken your first step into BM GB’s. I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself and it’ll be great to see this Skyrocket kit being built here. She certainly looks like it’s been built for purpose, so good luck and have fun. 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

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It's been an entire week since I joined this group build, and have made no progress until today. I thought I would have begun by now... instead, I've been preoccupied by my other build, which is now nearly complete:

 

48785111913_d554f8961e_c.jpg 

 

(If interested, that WIP can be found below)

 

 

 

 

No more excuses, here we go!

 

As is customary, I began building with the cockpit. Because this build will be cockpit "closed", and there is very little glass in the canopy, my main purpose in doing the cockpit is to give my pilot a place to sit. Thus, I put little effort (truthfully, none at all) on detailing.

 

48850045228_fd503c5211_z.jpg  48850401901_09c3469d37_z.jpg 

 

Special Hobby molded the cockpit hatch and canopy as a single clear piece. You can see here how little visibility there will be into the cockpit with the hatch closed:

 

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I did find it necessary to grind down the backside of the cockpit rear wall, else it interferes with the nose gear bay and prevents the fuselage halves from fully mating:

 

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The single most irritating thing about this kit is that nearly every join is a butt-joint.  Starting with the fuselage halves, there are no alignment pins or tabs:

 

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So, I had to add my own (you can also see the magnet I've added for the in-flight base):

 

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This is what the wing join looks like, and where it locates onto the fuselage:

 

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I addressed this by adding brass pins to the wings, and drilling corresponding locating holes in the fuselage:

 

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The vertical stab does have locating tabs, but they are too shallow to give the join much strength:

 

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and the horizontal stabs are butt-joins, just like the wings:

 

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I added brass pins to the vertical stab, both for its join to the fuselage, and for the horizontal stabs:

 

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It took a fair amount of time to get all the pins and locating tabs in place, but in the end it was worth it.

 

Look Ma, No Glue!

 

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I agree about the 'no tabs' frustration, however you're doing a grand job with the brass rods and aligning this all into symmetry. It's looking really good and will make a lovely addition to your in-flight collection. The magnet to hold the stand is a novel idea, I'd like to see more of what's going on here. 

Cheers and nice progress... Dave 

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I'm actually making progress, even though it's been nearly a week since my past post.

 

I glued the fuselage together and added the landing gear doors. As you can see, the fit is terrible!

 

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I was forced to resort to the modeler's ultimate weapon: Bondo!

 

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A few iterations of putty, sand, inspect, putty again, etc. and I finally got this Special Hobby challenge sorted:

 

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I also worked on the cockpit and Scott, my intrepid test pilot:

 

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Scott, unfortunately, is now a double-amputee below the knees. But at least he fits under the canopy!

 

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The kit provides nice PE for the instrument panel. I elected to save that for the spares box, and instead used a generic IP decal. It just might be barely visible through the small rectangular windows beneath the windscreen:

 

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Next step will be to glue the clear hatch/canopy combo piece, fill seams, and mask the clear parts. Then I'll prime the fuselage to check for flaws, add wings & empennage surfaces, and we'll be ready for paint & decals.

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Yes, she's certainly a tight squeeze even without poor Scotty's legs chopped off! You certainly are making progress which is always good to see no matter how small you may think it is. 

Cheers.. Dave  

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More progress!

 

Glued the hatch/canopy in place and masked the clear parts. I applied generous amounts of Mr. Surfacer to blend in with the fuselage profile. It looks pretty ugly here:

 

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But cleaned up nicely. Here it is primed:

 

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Wings and vertical stab are now on. Without the pins this would have been nearly impossible. As it was, the wing-fuselage join had a huge gap, especially along the lower seam. I used CA + baking powder to fill and strengthen the wing-fuselage join. There was also a gap on the starboard side of the vertical stab, which I filled with stretched sprue and putty:

 

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I used a scriber to create a narrow trench for the PE wing fences, and glued them in place with thin CA.

 

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There's only a couple other items to install, and then this Skyrocket will be ready for the white color coat.

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Got the base color coat on today. For this, I used Tamiya white surface primer straight from the rattlecan. This is a really great white -- it goes on thin and smooth, and covers well.

 

Here are the pics:

 

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Unmasking of the cockpit clear glazing was uneventful.

 

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Next up: Decals.

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A lovely update and must agree that Tamiya's Priming White looks to have gone on particularly well. I must try that as white's not the easiet paint to get right. 

Cheers.. Dave 

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Yes, I’ve had good experiences using it in the past. It’s full title is “fine surface primer” and as far as I know only comes in rattlecan. But, I’ve decanted it in the past and it works just as well. (My Skyrocket is straight from the can, however)

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It's been a tough week. Tuesday I went in for what was expected to be a relatively routine out-patient surgery to remove my gall bladder. The plan was to show up early, have the surgery done, and go home that afternoon. Unfortunately, my gall bladder had a different plan. Later, my surgeon described my gall bladder with a single word: Ugly!

 

Bottom line is, I went through two separate procedures and spent three days in the hospital, returning home Thursday evening. The good news is that I'm recovering nicely, and today I even felt up to a wee bit of modeling.

 

It's really very little, progress-wise, but I managed to get the black antiglare painted around the canopy and down the nose. Here's the actual aircraft:

 

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and my version:

 

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That's it! Next I'll gloss coat and begin decaling.

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Nice progress pics, looking really sharp there, quite unlike your Gall Bladder which hasn’t been too kind to you! Glad you’re on the mend and back on the modelling bench. 

 

Cheers and best of health.. Dave 

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Hi,

 

Now that would look nice hung under a B 29, though I suppose it would call for a fair bit of surgery. I will have to think about it when I get my spare 29 down from my stash.

 

Looking good,

 

Pete

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Got the decals on today. The kit's decals went on uneventfully, except for the big black X's, which insisted on folding up on themselves. I gave up on them and used decal stripes instead.

 

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48939789317_7b5271f607_z.jpg  48939071168_c892d95c28_z.jpg 

 

Also, the decals for the yellow NACA stripes were just a bit too short. I used Testor's "Blue Angels Yellow" to touch up the front and rear edges.

 

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All that's left to do is put this baby up on a stand. I could either use a vertical acrylic rod with a magnet at the top (there's a magnet already inside the fuselage, at the CG) or I could bend an acrylic rod and mount it in the exhaust. Decisions, decisions!

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Well done Bill, for a first GB entry you've done exceptionally well with this kit and the Galley photo's look excellent. The basic shape of the Skyrocket belay the work and effort that's been invested to make this kit look so good. Thanks for your contribution and I hope you've enjoyed this GB. 

 

Cheers.. Dave  

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Lovely job on that Bill, I really can't have been paying attention for you to have got all the way through that without me having a nosy at it. I'm trying to decide if it was area ruled or not, it might have gone faster if it had been. Thanks for the Tamiya white tip.

Steve.

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9 hours ago, stevehnz said:

Lovely job on that Bill, I really can't have been paying attention for you to have got all the way through that without me having a nosy at it. I'm trying to decide if it was area ruled or not, it might have gone faster if it had been. Thanks for the Tamiya white tip.

Steve.

Area ruling is relative. The D-558-2 fuselage had a high fineness ratio, a thin and not very big (in area) swept wing, and an empennage above a significantly tapered aft fuselage so it wasn’t that far from the ideal even though the fuselage wasn’t indented at the wing root. The F3H Demon (which was only transonic due to a lack of thrust but the sleeker prototype could easily break the sound barrier in a descent, as opposed to a steep dive) and the F8U-1 Crusader were similar configurations. The F7U Cutlass and F4D Skyray were far from ideal, with short fuselages and thick wings. One more time, the F4D was not supersonic in level flight; the F5D was with only a modest increase in thrust because it had a longer fuselage and thinner wings.

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