Luckily for all modelers, NASA documents its research thoroughly, and that includes purpose-built aircraft like the AD-1. Searching the web revealed numerous photos of the cockpit during construction and over the course of the testing program. Although the plane only flew 79 times, there were a number of changes to the instrument panel, and the rod used to prop up the canopy was white in some images and black in others.
I started by airbrushing the instrument panel the same blue-tinted gray mixed from various paints. The instruments were picked out in the appropriate colors based on the photos – white for the meters at the lower left of the panel, black for the five dials in the center, and black for the radio and the various switches on the right side of the cockpit. I also added some wiring below the instrument panel shelf.
The kit provides the round head cushion on the rear bulkhead, but there was a round fitting below it that was missing. I made a disk of thin styrene and drilled a hole at its center, painted it a lighter color of gray, then slipped it over the head cushion and CA-glued it in place. There’s no separate seat, just a seat-shaped area in the fuselage for the pilot with seat belts. I made my belts from lead foil with photoetched hardware from the spares box, and added shoulder pads on the tops of the belts made from .020 by .030 Plastruct stock which was painted a sage green color. The sidewalls each received an actuating rod for the canopy on each side of the cockpit sill. I also added the throttle levers from styrene rod and made a small silver panel for the left side console from a photoetched part. The kit’s stick was painted and added, and a set of leads for the radio was made from two pieces of fine lead wire, was added to the right side.
The last step was to apply a Future wash (50-50 Pledge with Future Shine and water, with a tiny amount of black acrylic paint added for color) and then add some small decals to the rear of the cockpit to replicate some of the details visible in the photos. I shot the cockpit with flat coat to eliminate the resulting shine.
The plane had a nose probe, and the kit apparently had a piece of wire to replicate it, but this was missing from the box. I drilled out the very point of the nose with a drill bit, and found three progressively thinner sections of Albion Alloys telescoping tubing that were the right size to replicate the probe on the real plane. The sections were CA-glued into the nose, and some light sanding blended it in.
I wanted to display the model with the cockpit open. That required me to remove the vacuformed canopy from the carrier sheet, then very carefully cut along the windscreen framing with some very small surgical scissors. When the two were separated, I dipped them in Future. When I test-fit the windscreen to the fuselage I found it was too wide. Trimming the sides eventually brought it down to the right size, and I added it using white glue. Only after the windscreen was in place did I notice a small wire that ran from the instrument shroud through the large hole in the shelf under the windscreen. Reluctantly, I pulled off the windscreen, added the wire, and re-applied the windscreen, the masked both transparencies with Tamiya tape.
I brush-painted the inside of the engines and the exhausts with ModelMaster stainless steel. The entire model was then shot with a coat of True North flat white. When that was dry, I gave the model a coat of Future-equivalent acrylic to make it nice and shiny to prepare the model for decals.
The kit’s decals include the blue stripe with gold cheat lines that ran the length of the aircraft. They’re ALPS-printed, so I carefully trimmed them and dunked them in water. The decals behaved well enough, but they were too long – they were fit to the engine pylons, but if used as-is the stripe would lap over the nose! I carefully removed the decal from the model and cut out a quarter-inch section, then re-applied the decal, working hard to butt the edges of the sections together. The decal was translucent, so any overlap would result in a much darker strip of blue in the overlapping section.
Once the decals were in place, I let the model sit. And, of course, the decals decided to wrinkle. No amount of setting solution would get them to budge. At this stage, I set the model aside and went to the Northwest Scale Modelers Modelmania event in Seattle. I shared my woes with Jim Bates, who suggested overcoating the decals with several layers of clear coat, then sanding the decals gently until the surface blemishes were flattened out. Any issues could then be touched up.
That’s what I did – brush-painting two coats of Future over the stripe, then sanding the stripe with 1500-grit sandpaper. This knocked all the high spots of the decals away. I followed with a pass with a 3000-grit sanding cloth, which further smoothed the decals. I found that ModelMaster cobalt blue was nearly an exact match, and I used it to touch up a few small areas where white spots were left behind after the initial sanding. The touch ups, when dry, were also polished with the sanding cloth to blend them into the decal.
The wing was also painted with True North white paint, but there was a little speck of dark material in the paint on the top of the wing. I gently sanded the paint with a used sanding stick, and to my initial horror, the very slightly raised circular hub above the pivot acquired a gray highlight around it! Looking at photos, however, showed that the real plane had exactly the same discoloration – so I left it! After a gloss coat, I made a sludge wash and highlighted the control surfaces and the few panel lines on the airplane.
I sprayed the fuselage and wing with two heavily-thinned coats of Dullcote, which reduced the shine but didn’t make the model dead flat. The tiny resin wheels were painted while the clear coat dried. Later, I gave the main gear legs a swipe with some dark brown paint per the kit instructions and added the wheels. I touched up the intakes, and painted the exhausts of the jets with ModelMaster burnt metal.
The canopy was detailed with sealing strips made from lead wire on the canopy sills, then white-glued in place and supported by a piece of .020 rod painted black.
I applied a drop of chrome silver paint to the location of the anti-collision beacon on the vertical tail, followed by a drop of Tamiya clear red. The wing was added next – not at the maximum 60-degree pivot, but at around 50 degrees. The last step was to paint the nose probe aluminum, and to add a yaw vane that started out life as a photoetched 1:700 anemometer.
And with this, I had a neat little Rutan design on my shelf! This kit is hard to find, but if you see one grab it – it’s easy to build, has room for detailing, and will certainly be a conversation starter sitting in your display.
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Flat Spins and Milk Runs 