TXR-2 INTERCEPTOR

A Futuristic Conversion

Having purchased a 1:48 scale kit of the TSR-2, I immediately got to work redesigning it and trying to make it look even more futuristic than it already was. A series of drawings and some reference material from two old, 1960s puppet TV shows; “Joe 90” and “The Secret Service” convinced me to combine features of two separate aircraft in particular episodes.

The cockpit and crew were built as is and installed into position. Forward canard wings were pinned to the fuselage using brass tube and the vertical stabiliser was reversed and added to with 2mm sheet styrene to elongate it. The rear stabilisers became new wingtips and, again, were strengthened with short pieces of brass tubing.

Where the rear stabilisers were supposed to be, I added sheet styrene to the trailing edge of both wings to increase their surface area. The new sections were blended in using car putty and many hours of sanding to hide the prominent joins. The nose section was part of a drop tank from another aircraft, trimmed and blended in to the fuselage with putty. After masking off the cabin area, the model was primed and sanded down again with steel wool.

A filed down nail became the new pitot tube and the base coat was sprayed on – a Tamiya colour called Middle Stone. After drying, the fuselage was masked off and the underside sprayed Tamiya Light Blue. After cutting intricate masks from Tamiya tape for the camouflage pattern, the upper fuselage was completely masked off and sprayed Nato Green.

All three base colours were darkened slightly with Tamiya Black and then tiny masks were cut out and fixed to the model and sprayed, to give a panelling effect. The landing gear was shortened, especially in the rear, by cutting and pinning the remaining sections with brass rod. Numerous decals were added, along with black panel lines and many strips of car pinstriping tape.