Designed
in the 1970’s by Jim Bede, the BD-5 was probably the most famous of all of his
designs. Most people remember the BD-5 from the opening scene in the 1983 James
Bond movie ‘Octopussy’ or from various airshow appearances of the Bud Light
Microjet or the Coors Light Silver Bullet.
While in between
various model projects, I was looking for something small and simple to work on.
ARII had just released the old LS BD-5 kit so I decided that would be the
perfect one to do. The ARII release comes with four complete kits, two BD-5B’s
and two BD-5J’s. Not a bad deal for $6. I built the BD-5B straight from the
box using the kit decals, but I’m always on the lookout for something a little
different and I happened to come upon a shot of the ‘Pepsi Microjet’ flown
by Micro Aviation Services. I contacted MAS and they helped out with the various
markings necessary to do their aircraft.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Rather
than having a hole in the bottom of the BD-5J, I modified one of the display
stands so it would attach through the exhaust. It was certainly a challenge to
mask and paint something so tiny, but it sure was worth the effort and made an
interesting contrast to the next project, which was repainting a 1/18 scale
F-104.
Tony
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