Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical YQM-98A R-Tern
This is a model of a rather rare and unknown subject. Back in the mid-1970s, the Air Force was looking into having a drone perform reconnaissance, communication relay, and atmospheric sampling, and had a demo/competition program called Compass Cope. Boeing was selected as the sole source for the demo, but Teledyne Ryan protested due to the fact that they had been making recon drones for over 15 years at that point. Ryan's drones had been rather successful in the Vietnam War and in keeping an eye on North Korea, so the Air Force awarded them a contract for the demo too. Ryan took their AQM-91, which was build for the Compass Arrow program, and redesigned it to be a long endurance and ground launched platform. The result was the YQM-98A R-Tern.
The Ryan plane met all the Air Force's requirements, and performed better than the Boeing plane in several areas, but at the end of the program the Air Force selected the Boeing plane because it cost less. Ryan contested the selection due to the better performance of the R-Tern, but it didn't help because the whole program was cancelled shortly after due to lack of a sensor to put on the plane. Ryan's plane eventually ended up at the Pima Air and Space museum, but from one source I saw it has been moved recently.
Being a UAV pilot, I'm rather interested in the development and history of UAVs. If you look at the history or Ryan Aeronautical, you can see how they slowly evolved their original target drone into what is now Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk. This plane is about 2 generations short of the Global Hawk, and can do several things that the Global Hawk can do today. What really amazes me about this is that it was all done back in the 1970s, well before anyone in the general public was even aware that there were pilotless plane flying out there taking pictures.
This model was an Airmodel vacuuform kit. It's still available, but the mold seems pretty old. The model overall wasn't bad for a vacuuform, but you are going to have to put a little work into it. The good news is that you don't have to worry about a vacuuform canopy. Those can be rather difficult, and because this one doesn't have a cockpit you won't have to deal with it. But it makes up for it with the engine. It's molded in two halves, and took a little finesse to get it all to line up correctly and not have any big gaps.
Another issue with it that the wings are molded in two halves, and they are rather thick in the back. I could have sanded down the back a lot more than I did, but I was already getting a little nervous with how much I took off, so I didn't press it. Unless you are very careful, I wouldn't expect to get the trailing edge of the wing to be as thin as an injection mold model. Still, it turned out fairly well, so I can't complain too much. The worst part of the kit was the landing gear. They are just lumps of something that vaguely resembles struts and tires. I just dug into the spare parts bin and used some that were very close to the pictures I had available online. The turned out pretty good, so I was happy with them.
This model didn't come with any decals, so I had to make my own. Fortunately, there aren't many on the actual plane. There are the tail numbers and the tern decal on the tails, but that's it. The tail numbers were easy, but the tern was difficult. I printed out an outline on white decal film and then carefully cut the outline with a hobby knife just deep enough to cut the decal film. Then, when I soaked the decal in water, the faint outline that I printed washed away, and I removed the remaining decal film to give me a nice white tern. It was difficult, but it turned out quite nicely.
Everything was going pretty well until I had the flat coat on and I finished attaching the landing gear when I hit my first major snag. It was tail heavy. I was pissed. I don't recall reading in the instruction that I would need to add nose weight, but I could have missed that. I didn't want to cut through my nice finish, so I vary carefully cut along a seam line at the end of the black nose. I carefully added enough weight to the front to get the plane to rest on its gear correctly and reattached the nose. Then I repainted the back seam and re-coated it again. The end is that you can't really tell I didn't anything unless you look very closely. It won't win a competition, but I'm not that good anyway.
Overall, I was very happy with this model, and I'm looking forward to finishing more UAVs to get the collection built up a little more.