A build of Ken West's X-15A-2....

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dhanners

Active Member
Mar 16, 2004
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st. paul, mn, usa
Haven't posted here in a looong time so I figured I'd jump back in with my most recent build, Ken West's excellent X-15A-2. The model hit the market in 2009 and I put off building it forever because while the X-15 may well be my favorite airplane, I've never been a fan of the 'A-2. The 'A-2 was created when a 28-inch section was added to the fuselage of the second X-15, 66671, after it was damaged in a hard landing. Even though the X-15A-2 hit a record speed of Mach 6.7, it could be argued it was a dog of an airplane, with numerous aborted flights and in-flight failures. In fact, it's speed record flight was its last because heat burned through the vehicle's structure.

But, there are no models of the shorter X-15 out there that near Ken's model in detail, so I decided it was time to tackle it. The model comes in 1/32nd scale, but I shrunk it to 1/48th. I built it "in flight," with the canopy closed, the gear up and the lower tail intact. I modeled one of the flights without external tanks. Ken's model builds into a great replica as-is, but I added some details to enhance accuracy.

The real X-15s showed signs of heat stress and weathering, and the panels were a mish-mash of shades of blue-black (the vehicle's Inconel construction) or black (paint) and these points are important considerations for modelers to pay attention to. Ken's model depicts some of the black panels as gray, which I take issue with, but there's not much I can do about it.


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A beautiful model built excellently! You can even see the nozzles in the front, as this plane flew in such thin atmosphere, it needed the nozzles to point it back to earth. Great job. Thanks for these pics. I have always appreciated your knowledge of the history of your model subjects. :)
 
zathros said:
A beautiful model built excellently! You can even see the nozzles in the front, as this plane flew in such thin atmosphere, it needed the nozzles to point it back to earth. Great job. Thanks for these pics. I have always appreciated your knowledge of the history of your model subjects. :)
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Thanks for the kind words. And the four nozzle locations are offset from center; instead of being at 12, 3, 6 and 9 (if you're thinking the fuselage radius as if it were a clock) they are closer to 1, 4, 7 and 10. In looking at photos of X-15s, that's the quickest way to discern between the real vehicles and the mock-ups that were built. Their RCS locations were at 12, 3, 6 and 9. The two mock-ups are now at NASA/Dryden and the Pima Air & Space Museum. Your X-15 trivia for the day....
 
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You always know your subject matter. I scoured the Dyna-Soar book you sent me. ;)
 
You did a FANTASTIC JOB on this project! It looks very realistic! Everything is very clean and crisp.
I have thought about tackling this model. Do you have any suggesting or words of advice that I should take into consideration?
 
Rhaven Blaack said:
You did a FANTASTIC JOB on this project! It looks very realistic! Everything is very clean and crisp.
I have thought about tackling this model. Do you have any suggesting or words of advice that I should take into consideration?
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Thanks for the kind words. My only advice is to follow Ken's instructions. Also, he provides formers for the fuselage chunks, but I used a circle cutter to cut my own to make sure they would all be the same size. When cutting formers by hand, there always seems to me to be minute differences. Or maybe I just don't cut that well....

It really does go together quite well.
 
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That rocket seemed to prove we can make a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) vehicle.
 
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