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Short
history
On
October 14, 1947, Capt. Charles "Chuck" Yeager" became the fastest
man on the Earth, reached a speed of 1,127 kilometers (700 miles) per hour with his
Bell X-1 called "Glamorous Glennis" in tribute of his wife. The
flight demonstrated that aircraft could be designed to fly faster than sound,
and the concept of a "sound barrier" crumbled into myth.
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The
Kit
I
have used the Eduard kit in 48nd scale in the "Profipack" version
(item no. 8032), strongly suggested ,with resin parts to replace the wheels and
most of the cockpit and a nice etched metal parts for at least three different
versions of the instrument panel of the X-1. Moulded in light grey plastic,
the kit is beautifully detailed, with finely recessed panel lines. The decal
sheet, is of a very good quality and they are super thin and present four
distinct color schemes . Two of them are orange overall, one white and one
orange with white tail and fuselage sections.
Construction
I have built it in a few weeks,
passing amusing hours. This is the classic kit that, as a my friend often says,
"you can built in a week-end". So there isn't much to say, I
have only replaced the oxygen hose with a scratchbuilt one (thin thread of
branch wrapped around to one more large) and I have detailed some cockpit
panels adding push-buttons and switches.
Painting and weathering
For the aircraft orange color, I
have listened to many different opinions, obviously all different between them.
Differently as someone can think,
this aircraft presents a weathered orange finish as you can see in more
images of the first X-1, so this is my way;
First I had to paint all the aircraft with a coat of Humbroll n.18 Gloss Orange,
after that I filled all the panel lines with black oil color, the excess
of color was wiped off with a very lightly damped cloth.
The second step was to spray over different coats of thinned Tamiya X6
Orange color, more lighter in the center of every panel and darker on sides to
reproduce the various shades.
The decals where then applied,
using Gunze Mr. Mark Softer. Once the decals had set, the model was sealed with
a coat of mixed Gunze Clear and gloss clear varnish until catching up a
semi-gloss finish.
You can judge the result from the pictures of the model.
Sebastiano
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Reference
- Aerofax Datagraph n.3
"Bell X-1 variants"
Links
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