Douglas Skybolt - 1/72 scale Rockets, Missiles, Drones and RPVs

Kit Review
Sharkit Douglas AGM-87A, 1/72 scale, kit no. 72009
by Al Magnus
First of all, I have to mention that
the box top artwork is incorrect.
The missile was originally
designated GAM-87A (not AGM-
87A) by the US Air Force. This
was changed to AGM-48 when the
Joint Services Designation was
adopted in 1963. The RAF also
had plans to use this missile to give
their bombers standoff nuclear
capabilities. In any case the missile
never saw production with either
nation.
This kit is cast in a light greyish-yellow resin. There are twenty-two parts for the two missiles and
two wing pylons intended for the Airfix Avro Vulcan. Since the parts are resin you will need to
use cyanoacrylate super glue for construction. I have added part numbers to the instruction
diagram below to aid with identification for this review.
No decals are provided.
There are two options available for the missile. You can build either the early version (GAM-
87A) with the pointed nose cone, or the later version (AGM-48) with the second stage upper.
The resin casting is indifferent. The body parts (parts 2, 3 & 6) are cast as solid pieces. They are
nice and straight but rife with pinholes. The fins (parts 4 & 5 – four of each per missile) are
extremely thin (ergo fragile), with some being incompletely cast or warped.
I elected to build one missile as the later AGM-48B version.
© AC Magnus 2006

Because I wanted to display my missile on a stand, the first thing I did was saw off the
aerodynamic housing (they greyed out portion in the parts diagram above) that covered the tail of
the missile while being carried underwing.
Next the nose was glued to the body. Some sanding of the mating surfaces was done beforehand
to ensure a nice straight join. The seam was filled with more super glue and baking soda, and
sanded smooth.
I replaced the fins with copies made from plastic sheet and then glued them to the fuselage. The
missile body has locating grooves (red lines in the above parts diagram) to aid with placement of
the fins. Surprisingly the fit was excellent, probably because the thickness of the plastic matched
with width of the grooves well. But I still had some other filling to do with respect to the fins. The
missile has eight fins consisting of four long fins (part 4) and equal number of short fins (part 5).
Unfortunately all of the grooves (long red line in parts diagram) are of the same length as the long
fins, so I had to fill in the portion of the grooves that remained once the small fins are added
(short red line in parts diagram).
Getting the missile ready for painting was a laborious process. As I mentioned above, the body
parts were rife with pinholes. To remove them I went through a number of steps. First I identified
what holes I could and filled them with thick grey paint. Then I sanded the missile smooth with
wet-or-dry sandpaper moistened with some water. After sanding I inspected for more holes and
repeated the process many times until I figured that I had most of the holes filled. This was
followed with the first coat of light grey primer, which revealed more holes. These were filled
with more thick grey paint and the kit sprayed with grey primer again. These two steps were
repeated as often as required to eliminate the holes.
With the prep finished, final painting commenced with a coat of Floquil Reefer White as the base
primer. The final coats, of which there were about seven, were done with Testors gloss white. I
sanded between coats to get a nice smooth and even finish to the paint.
As for markings I had to go to the spares box. I wanted to do a SAC version with the colourful
blue star spangled banner. I had some Model-Aire International decals for the AGM-28 Hound
Dog that looked like they would work but test fitting the decals showed they were about 10mm
short. So I decided to make a British example. I applied roundels from a Blue Rider World War
One RAF roundel sheet, and the other markings, which I believe are trestle locations, were
applied using some spare black lines.
So all in all, this kit makes for a very interesting subject, but you will need to have a ton of
patience to eliminate the numerous flaws in the resin to get an acceptable finished model.
© AC Magnus 2006