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Dragon 1/144 North American X-15

By Matt Bittner

Introduction

The North American X-15 was developed to map flight at the edges of space. It was launched from a "mother ship" (a modified B-52), made its flights, then landed unpowered on a nose wheel and skids. There were numerous records broken, and a lot of data acquired, with the X-15 flights. If you're looking for more information on the entire X-15 program, then you can do no wrong by picking up the book Hypersonic – The Story of the North American X-15.

The Kit

The Dragon 1/144 X-15 actually consists of two kits. Each kit has 39 grey injected pieces, and one clear injected canopy (there are more parts present, but these are for future versions). The molding is top-notch and looks really great. There are decals for two X-15 schemes: the first prototype, 6670; and the aircraft of the first flight, 6671. Decals are in register and look great.

There isn't much to building this kit. The instructions have you glue the cockpit into the forward fuselage half (the fuselage is divided into a front and rear section) then you glue the two fuselage halves together. Once that is done then you glue on the tail parts, closed-canopy (and I'm unsure if this can be opened), and wings. Now you have a 1/144 X-15.

From here you'll need to make decisions. The first decision is if you're going to display it gear-up, or gear-down. If you decide gear-down, there is another decision to make – display it on its moving "dolly" (as it would be prior to being added to the B-52) or as if it just landed (in which the skids are deployed). If you decide gear-up, then add the rest of the parts, paint, then decal, and now you have a finished X-15. If you decide gear-down, then paint now, then add the landing gear and finish.

Conclusion

This shouldn't be too-difficult of a kit to finish. There aren't a lot of parts and with the excellent molding Dragon provides it could make it even a weekend build.

Our thanks to Dragon USA for sending the review kit.