Olimp

Bell X-2 1/72 scale Golden Age Hobby Kit

Kit Number: GA 72-01

Reviewed by  Walt Fink, IPMS# 2447

MSRP: Not available www.olimpmodelsgroup.com Olimp's new 1/72 X-2 kit arrived here in pretty bad shape, having been mauled somewhere in packing or mailing; several parts were broken, including the pitot boom, control stick, outrigger supports and main "gear" well. The right fuselage half was broken in two right at the cockpit, and the left fuselage half was severely fractured, with big cracks radiating from the cockpit to the wing root. One of the delicate wing fences was broken off. So....my first job was to repair all the broken parts before I could get into building the kit. The gray plastic moldings are pretty good for the most part, with nice recessed panel lines and some fine rivet detail. The kit cockpit has a basic tub, rear bulkhead, seat, stick, and instrument panel. I added some masking tape seat belts and a replacement control stick from brass wire for the broken kit part. The instructions specify mounting the cockpit tub to the top of the nose gear well, but in fact the cockpit is located well forward and above the wheel well so I put these assemblies into the fuselage separately. The fuselage needed to have the interior surfaces of the vertical fin filed down to get a good fit, but the wings went together nicely; there are no locating pins or tabs for the wing-to-fuselage joints so I reinforced them with small pins of brass wire. The horizontal stabilizer has small mounting lugs, but for ease of painting the model, I replaced those with a piece of brass wire and left the stabs off until I had finished detailing the bare metal stab pivot areas with foil. To remedy the broken wing fence situation, I sanded them both off, cut a slot in each wing, and inserted new fences made from styrene sheet. The "rocket exhaust" plug for the aft fuselage was pretty rough and was smaller than the fuselage, so a good deal of filler was needed there to fair everything in. The canopy was thick and slightly yellowed; treating it with Meguiar's plastic polish helped its clarity a great deal...it still had to be sanded down to fit the fuselage. Since the pitot boom had been a casualty of the shipping process, I made a new one from stainless steel tubing and epoxied it into the nose cap. I painted the model with Gunze Sangyo gloss white acrylic with their Tire Black on the anti-glare panel. Testors Interior green enamel was used in the wheel wells, and Testors Aluminum Metallizer on the landing gear. The decals went on nicely, but the blue of the National Insignia was too light---I replaced the stars and bars with some from a SuperScale sheet; only the serial number for the first prototype is supplied on the kit decal sheet. The stenciling is a nice touch but my reference photos of the real X-2 showed lots more than what was provided, so I added some from the spares box to match those pictures. A word about the model's accuracy here. First, there are no real X-2s in existence, so Olimp didn't have any real aircraft to photograph or take measurements of. The prototype for the one I built (6674) was destroyed in an out-of-control inertia-coupling accident which killed test pilot Milburn Apt, and the pieces of 6675, the second aircraft built, are at the bottom of Lake Ontario following an in-flight explosion prior to launch which killed test pilot Jean Ziegler, very nearly destroyed its EB-50A carrier aircraft as well, and killed an onboard crewmember observer. The model is a mix of both prototypes so it'll help to have references prior to building the kit....I used Jay Miller's excellent work, "The X-Planes". The wings have the aileron booster tabs which were only on 6675 (I removed those). The rocket engine nozzles and their external ducting aren't included---the kit's "rocket exhaust" represents the ballasted dummy tail cone which Bell used for glide tests of the airframe. The main landing gear skid represents the early long-stroke installation which caused the X-2 to be extremely unstable on landing. I shortened the strut to reduce the aircraft's nose-down attitude as seen in my reference photos, and for strength, used brass wire to pin and reinforce all the joints; I shortened those pins when I assembled things. The ventral fin (part 28) is omitted from the assembly instructions. I had a question about the positioning of the nose landing gear door when the wheel was extended...it's not shown in any photos, so I just left it off. The outriggers don't match the ones in the reference book's photographs, and the one in-flight shot of 6674 shows them not to even be installed, so I left those off as well. Overall, I thought this was a pretty satisfying build. It took some tweaking, but the end result is a good-looking representation of the X-2. Many thanks to Olimp and to IPMS/USA for the chance to review this new offering .

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