DAEDALUS HYPERSONIC AIRLINER

The Future of Flight

Having seen an intriguing aircraft design in an issue of "Sci-Fi and Fantasy Modeller", I decided to begin with the same model kit that was used in the article and redesign it to suit my particular tastes.

I first purchased the kit of the Revell Boeing SST Supersonic Clipper a few years ago. After selecting the “in-flight” mode version from the two variations in the box, I proceeded to remove the tail and join the engines into pairs. Two wings from another kit became the new vertical stabilisers. The engine pairs were mounted to each of the wing tips, along with a small section of fin.

A new underside section, the intake for the rear engine, was fashioned from sheet styrene, glued onto the surface and puttied in to blend the areas together. About the only item, apart from sheet styrene, that was not from the original kit, was the rear jet exhaust that came from a 1:72 scale SAAB Draken kit. A thin brass tube was glued along both sides of the fuselage in order to allow me to suspend the model in a “flight” mode.

After much puttying and sanding, a smooth surface was achieved and the model began to look quite aerodynamic and futuristic. The rear “overwing” was fashioned from styrene and left off until the painting stage. The basic colours chosen were Polar White for the underside and Jade Green for the upper surfaces.

The landing gear was assembled from the alternate landing configuration version of the kit and made to “plug in” to the body for a variety of photography poses. Tamiya masking tape, 10mm wide, was firstly sprayed in Marinello Red and added to both sides of the fuselage, then a 3mm wide piece sprayed in gloss black, then masked over with more strips, after which Marinello Red was oversprayed to give a window effect.

The model was sprayed with gloss varnish and the generic decals added from the spares box, along with thin pieces of car pinstriping tape for detail. After this a sticky Post-it note was used as a mask for the addition of pencil shavings which were rubbed onto the surface with a finger to create the subtle lines. A few more coats of gloss and matte varnish completed the model.

Update: Yahoo! Journeyed down to Brsibane for the Queensland Model Hobbies Expo, the first time in three years. Took the Daedalus and managed to win a Third Place Bronze medallion for it. Guess somebody must have liked it a lot. Very happy with that and, just for a change, I was one of 7 entries in that category, so I actually beat four others - who would have thought!