1/72 Italeri SR-71C

by Darwin Evelsizer

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SR-71C, serial # 17981 was created to replace the SR-71B that was lost in a crash January 11, 1968, just north of Beale AFB, CA.  It was made from the aft fuselage, wings and engine nacelles of YF-12A # 60934 which suffered nose damage in a hard landing Aug 4, 1966.  The SR-71 static test article was used for the forward fuselage.  This hybrid combination made it first flight on March 4, 1969, and accumulated 556.4 flight hours before it's last flight on April 11, 1976.  She was retired at that time and became a hangar queen and source of spare parts until September 1990 when she was disassembled and shipped to Hill AFB, Utah, for display in their museum. I made my 1/72 scale model of 17981 in much the same manner by combining the front section of the Italeri SR-71 with the rear section of the Italeri YF-12A.

The camera windows on the bottom of the fuselage were filled in with putty because the SR-71 trainers do not carry cameras, even though they have all of the markings for them.

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These  2 photos above show the top and bottom of the fuselage joint.  

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Model Master flat black was used as a primer and then details such as panel lines, weathering and radar absorbing triangles around the wing edges were picked out and highlighted with a silver prisma color pencil.  The pencil was dipped in saliva to get it to adhere to the model because regular water doesn't work for some reason.  This is not too sanitary, but it is effective.

Brake lines were added to all three landing gear assemblies plus the second landing/taxi light to the nose gear strut along with some other minute details.  

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All Blackbirds have an assortment of red protective covers that were put in place when they were not being flown.  I made the engine vent and intake covers as well as the cockpit window covers out of .020 sheet styrene and painted them red.  The forward fuselage chine covers were made from 3 X 5 card stock and the inlet spikes were just painted red.  A coat of model master clear gloss was applied and then the decals followed by a coat of MM clear flat.  The decals were a real nightmare because they were from a Micro Scale sheet that was over 20 years old and they broke up into a bunch of little pieces when they were placed in the water.  It was a real jigsaw puzzle getting them put back together.  I spent a total of about 40 hours on my SR-71C trainer.  Anytime that you are in the Salt Lake City area, stop by the Hill AFB museum and see the real thing.

Darwin

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Photos and text © by Darwin Evelsizer