Lockheed U-2S Dragon Lady: 9th SRW, Beale AFB, CA

Box emptied. All the pieces and custom decals by Draw Decal.

Nose glued up. The small piece to the right fits in the small rectangular notch in the fuselage bottom. I have to ask, "Why?" It could have been moulded in. I made a mistake here and left the cockpit out, as the instructions give you the impression that it can be slid into the fuselage after gluing both fuselage sides together! At this point, I am blissfully ignorant of my mistake. More on this later.

Left intake glued on and PLRS cooling intake duct glued in place.

Tail fuselage glued (left) and horizontal and vertical stabs glued up (right). The right stab split the bottom of the tail, hence requiring a hemostat to clamp it firmly while gluing.

The cockpit pieces. Notice that the yoke is molded upside down on top of the control column. I deftly trimmed it off and reglued it beneath the round upper end of the control column.

Cockpit pieces painted. Not much color here, black, gray & a spot of red on the headrest.

Here we are with a nose on view. Hmm, everything aligned close enough. When I was gluing the rear fuselage to the center section, I ran into another SNAFU. The instructions are rather ambiguous about installing the jetpipe, which has a cut-out on the forward end and a notch along one side, either dorsal or ventral, depending on which way you install it. Well suffice to say, I placed it in upside down and had no room to insert the main undercarriage bay. So I had to disassemble the fuselage, remove and flip the jetpipe over and reglue the entire thing back together. Thank God for liquid cement. I have gotten to this point and the results are still pleasing. It sure looks like a U-2R/S.

Bottom view.

Top view

Alas and alack! The assembled cockpit is wider than the fuselage cockpit opening, requiring me to pull off the nose, split the upper forward fuselage joint, spread it apart with a hemostat while applying reverse pressure, and then deftly (Note: Word for the day!) placing the completed cockpit into the void. After which, I resecured the fuselage with some liquid cement and applied pressure with a clothespin. Not my best modeling moment, but satisfied after taking a very fine swizzle stick to clean up all the glue overruns on the fuselage sides and nose. Phew, I am glad that is done! I wonder if Clarence Johnson had this much trouble assembling his first U-2!

Masking canopy with Parafilm-M and a small piece of blue tape.

"Super pods" glued in place. I used the generic round super pods, not the angled ones with various antennae. Glue the canopy on and she is all ready for paint!

First coat of black paint. Topside.

Custom decals by Greg Drawbaugh of DrawDecals. Note that the "BB" & "9 SRW" have a silver shadow to them! Thanks, Greg, they sure are nice!

Outriggers painted International Orange, wheel rims and struts are silver. I will cut from trees, clean up, assemble and then paint the tires flat black. Part #23 is rather odd looking, however it is not called out in the construction process.

In step 1, it sure looks like you can insert the cockpit into the already assembled fuselage. Nope! Insert cockpit as you glue the two halves together. In step 4, there is no indication of orientation for part A1. I added the pen marks to show proper orientation.

My goal is to replicate these markings for my Captain. I will have to source the ACC badge from Caracal. Greg did a terrific job on these. The tail markings lined up perfectly and I was able to apply them as one piece.

Tail markings. I applied the smallest red ACC badge from the Caracal TAC/ACC sheet. I just barely squeezed it in between the iron cross red stripe on top and the Beale AFB BB station code underneath.