RoR Step-by-Step Review * U2-C Spyplane 1:48 Scale Testors Model Kit #516 Review

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1 RoR Step-by-Step Review * U2-C Spyplane 1:48 Scale Testors Model Kit #516 Review The Lockheed U-2 nicknamed "Dragon Lady" was designed in 1954 by Kelly Johnson in a division called the Skunk Works. This was Lockheed's top secret aircraft facility that also created the legendary SR-71 Blackbird and F-104 Starfighter. Made specifically for high altitude reconnaissance the aircraft has served the USAF, CIA, NASA, FEMA, and a few foreign air forces since the late 50's. The long, slender wings created excellent lift at low speeds allowing the aircraft to soar at extremely high altitudes. Over the years the U-2 has been re-configured for a myriad different missions such as air sampling, camera orientation for satellites, and of course photography. In its current state the aircraft has gained several feet in length through the use of fuselage "plugs" to accommodate more advanced surveillance equipment and fuel as well as huge under wing pods that provide space for more of the same. With all of this weight and the wing configuration the challenge to the pilot in flight is great. The aircraft must fly inside what is referred to as the coffin corner. This is a roughly 10 knot window at its optimal airspeed. Too fast and the wings will rip off the aircraft. Too slow and the aircraft will enter into an uncontrollable spin. Not much is known about the missions the U-2 flies today; but it will have a place in our air arsenal for many years to come. For the Modeler: Still available at online auctions and garage sales everywhere this kit is a 1:48 Scale U2-C Spyplane Testors Model Kit #516 Made in the USA re-release of the venerable Hawk kit and as such has been around for quite some time. The copyright on this package is 2002, but I remember the kit being around many years before that. The kit consists of approximately 65 parts molded in a soft black plastic. This kit features an excellent selection of markings for a USAF version in dark and light gray camo, a CIA bird in all black, and a NASA example in white and blue. The markings are clear and in register with little carrier film. The kit also comes with a nice airframe dolly is included which will save the very awkward landing gear from having to support the weight of the finished model. It also comes with a standing pilot figure.

2 Fig 0a & 0b The Kit: Here is the kit s contents and box art but this kit is big and impressive. The clear parts are excellent and free of distortion with a few scuffs as they aren't packaged separately. Initial inspection of these pieces shows me they will clean up very well though. The glare shield found on the actual jet is molded on the inside of the main canopy section as well which is a nice feature. I use its mostly Tamiya Extra Thin and Medium cements from a jar. For gap filling I use medium thickness super glue and Micro Scale Crystal Clear. Testors has "paneled" the bare plastic to assist the modeler if they chose not to paint. The effect disappears under a coat of primer however. The surface is composed of raised panel lines which look good compared to line drawings but are inconsistent in certain areas. They seem to be heavier on the wings than on the fuselage. Being a mold of considerable age, there is a significant amount flash on most of the parts. For the most part the flash is easily removed but in some areas it is bad enough to affect the shape and consistency of smaller pieces. Most of the flash on the bigger parts simply flakes off though and the softness of the plastic makes it pretty easy to remove the rest. I'll address this later in the text. Fig 2-2 Construction: I began this kit by carefully washing all the parts in warm (not hot) water with mild dish detergent. This took care of any mold release agents or fingerprints and helped the primer coat adhere better. I then cut out the wings, fuselage, and tail planes. I cleaned up most of the flash on the wings by first flaking off the big pieces (red arrows) and gluing the wings together.

3 Fig 2-3 After these were dry I mounted a large piece of painter's sand paper to a flat surface and was able to sand the whole join at once. This gave me a solid edge as well as filled in any seams on the leading edge. I then left them to dry as with such a long surface the glue needed to really set. Fig 3-1,4 While the wings dried I turned to the airframe stand. This would help greatly with handling at later stages as the joins and parts are spindly. I looked at various real world articles and decided to paint mine a glossy forest green. I first assembled the frame and cleaned up the edges with a sanding stick. I then primed the whole dolly with Krylon dark gray primer. I then primed the wheels. After these parts dried I sprayed them with Krylon satin Hunter Green. I then painted the tires flat black and left everything to dry overnight. Fig 13-4 The parts are simple and assemble easily, just add the wheels.

4 Fig 4-1The fuselage assembly was very easy only requiring the cockpit area be painted. I used the same Krylon primer as before and would use this to paint what little cockpit there was. I masked the area off and sprayed it Fig 4-2 After a few minutes was able to glue the whole fuselage together. The join here was pretty good but all of the edges needed to be cleaned up to get an even surface. I worked my way slowly up and down the fuselage to make sure the glue set well along the whole area to avoid any splitting later on. After the glue set I was rewarded with a very strong assembly. I squared up the tail fin with a sanding stick and ran over the length of the fuselage with a few different grits of sand paper to polish out the join. There were a few gaps especially around the nose and gear bays but overall it was pretty good. Fig 5-2 The next part of assembly was the very tricky addition of the flying surfaces. This is made more difficult by the fact that the wings are very long and thin which meant the mounting surface had to be very strong. Also the tail fin join had to be even as I didn't want to lose any surface detail to sanding.

5 Fig 5-3,4 Luckily the fit of the tail planes was decent and the gaps were minimal. The wings on the other hand had huge gaps in them and needed a lot of time to dry. During the working time I was able to align the wings correctly and get a solid join. To address the gaps I flooded the join with medium super glue and wiped off the excess in the direction of air flow and left it to dry. This took a few applications as the gap was deep. I left the airframe to dry for a two days to ensure a strong model. Fig 7-4 The canopy was cleaned with Windex to remove most of the scuffs and anything else on the surface. After it was dried I then dipped it in Future Floor Polish. I did this to both sections of canopy and wicked away the excess with a paper towel. These were then set on an index card to dry overnight. I was rewarded with an excellent, shiny canopy. Fig 8-3 The next step was to mask the canopy and glare shield. I masked the entire canopy using Tamiya masking tape then cut out the glare shield on the inside and frames on the outside. I then sprayed gloss white on the inside and flat black on the outside. This turned out very well and the effect is very realistic. You must be cautious when using any type of blade on a canopy as you only get one shot at it. If you mess up you must sand down the whole area and polish back out. This can be a time consuming exercise.

6 Fig 9-1,4 The last step before attaching the canopy was to finish the seat and instrument panel. These parts as represented in the kit are very basic. The panel is simply a shaped plastic blank with a decal to provide instrumentation. I simply made sure the panel was clean and attached the decal to the bare plastic using future floor polish. This guaranteed a good adhesion and bubble-free finish. I then glued this to the glare shield molded on the fuselage. Fig 9-3 I followed this up with the seat. I decided to spruce it up a bit by using various tapes and careful painting. I added straps with simple painters tape cut up and folded into strips. These were trimmed to the proper size and attached using super glue. A seat cushion was made using thicker gauze tape. The glue on the back is sufficient to hold it in place on its own. It is easy to trim and is thick. Its surface also perfectly represents a cloth seat cushion as that s what it is. Fig 9-5 The whole thing was then sprayed with our Krylon primer and left to dry. I then painted the head rest Model Master acrylic Insignia Red, the cushions MM acrylic Medium Green and the straps Polly- Scale Dirty White. The buckles are dabs of MM Steel. This added some nice color and relief from the dark gray cockpit. Unfortunately with the canopy in place; much of it isn't seen. Fig 10-2 The intakes presented a few challenges. They consist of a pair of intake lips, tunnel halves, and splitter plates. Be careful as these parts are "right and left handed" to their respective sides on the aircraft.

7 Fig 10-3 I started by attaching the splitter plates to the sides of the fuselage. This allowed for good alignment of the tunnel sections. These were attached next. There were a few gaps most notably where the tunnels hit the bulkhead in the fuselage. Fig 10-4 After these had dried I attached the lips on each side. Fit here was rather poor and large gaps showed all around the tunnel and bottom by the splitter plate. Fig 10-1 The interior of the intakes on the real article are glossy white. To replicate this I used a trick I learned a while back. I taped around all the joins and used a pipette to fill the intake with Tamiya acrylic Gloss White. I filled each intake to the "lip line" and left it in for a few minutes. I then used the same pipette to carefully siphon out all of the paint. Fig 10-5 This left a rather thick, but even coat on the entire intake wall. For what can be seen this is satisfactory.

8 Fig 11-1 After all of this was completed it was time to add the wing tanks. There are two types of tank included: slipper tanks (red arrows) and under wing tanks (blue arrows). Fig 11-3 The slipper tanks (red) are also handed" so be careful in their assembly sequence. The under wing tanks (blue) are simply split in half and once assembled only required light sanding. All of these attached without incident and there were minimal gaps. Fig 11-1a & 12-2 This left only the wing skids (red circle parts 29 and 30), APU intake, and air sampler pod (red arrow) to install.

9 Fig 12-5 Painting: "You can have any color you like, as long as its black". I decided early on that I wanted to do the CIA aircraft as the U-2 looks strange in anything else. This would also simplify painting and minimize markings. I checked over the whole model to look for obvious flaws and gaps then shot it with Krylon dark gray primer. I then let it dry overnight. I found a few left over gaps and took care of them with super glue and white glue respectively. After I sprayed the airframe with Quick-Color Flat Black enamel, making sure to mask the intakes with wadded paper towel. I gave the model two or three thin coats followed by a thicker "wet coat" and allowed it to dry overnight. I then rubbed the model down with an old T-shirt to buff the black a little and help with decal adhesion. I then pulled off all of the masking on the canopy and out of the intakes. These small features made a big difference with this all-black plane. Fig 12-6 I added the two serial numbers on the tail as provided in the kit. Sadly, these did not go on well (even with a glossy surface treatment) requiring a few applications of solvent to make them stick and even then they silvered badly. On the plus side from what few pictures I saw it looks like they were decals on the real thing too.

10 The Final Details: This only left the landing gear parts, airbrakes, and pogos. Fig 6-3, 13-2a The landing gear consisted of the struts, tires, and bays. On the real aircraft the bays are yellow zinc chromate so I replicated that using Model Master acrylic YZC primer. The doors are integral to the bays so this made things easy. Once I got good coverage on the inside I painted the outer doors Tamiya acrylic Flat Black. When dry, these actually snapped in place and required no glue. The gear itself is almost a gunmetal color on the real thing. I used MM Metalizer Titanium from a spray and polished these out after they had dried. Got a nice shine and painted the tires gloss white and flat black respectively. This variation of colors gave a really nice contrast to the belly. Fig 12-1 The canopy was tacked in place several times over the build to ensure proper alignment. This is one of the last things installed permanently though to make sure everything is correct. Fig 16-1 I painted the position light on the top of the airframe chrome silver and after it had dried I coated it with some clear red for a reflective effect.

11 Fig 13-3 Next up was the air brakes. I decided to paint these red as to help them stand out more. I first sprayed the interiors of the doors Glossy Red with an automotive lacquer and then hand painted the bays on the airframe with Model Master acrylic Insignia Red. Hydraulic actuators are included so I painted these and added them as per instructions. Fig 14-4 Last but not least I painted around the inside of the exhaust a dark metallic to simulate at least something being there. Fig 14-5 Lastly the pogos were painted red and the tires added. After these had dried I attached them to the model with a tiny drop of super glue. This all but completed the model.

12 Fig 999 Conclusion: Much like any knowledge of her missions, there isn't much around in the way of this aircraft in 1/48 scale. The Testor's kit has stood the test of time and as of yet is still the only game in town. A lot can be done with this airframe and a real showpiece can be had with a little patience. The model is very large and imposing on the display shelf and really draws the eye to its details. I would definitely build another, especially the NASA bird. There has only been one other re-boxing and that is by Italeri who marketed there s as a Senior Span/Spur bird with extra extensions and antennae. Though the kit is out of production it is still relatively easy to find. I highly recommend this as it will also allow you to practice many skills and give a very satisfying result. I did not finish off the pilot figure but it is available in this kit. It is poorly molded however and will take some work to make a presentable figure for a diorama.