It’s the early 80s. You’ve read articles about a mysterious aircraft that’s invisible. INVISIBLE. It can’t be seen by radar, can’t be shot down. There’s a secret government program running it. No one in the government will admit it’s real!

THEN, reports of this possibly non-existent aircraft being shot down over the northwest, pieces of it scattered across the woods, and government cleanup teams moving in quickly to clean up every tiny scrap. No admission of even a crash! Cover stories, Groom Lake sightings! What is this thing some people are calling a STEALTH FIGHTER. What does an invisible airplane look like? Can I even see it at all? WHAT IS STEALTH TECHNOLOGY?

We didn’t know for sure then, but Testors took a really good stab at it, explaining pretty accurately what stealth technology was, if not what the aircraft itself looked like. But they were close in some ways even then. Many of the terms here were new to us: radar absorbing materials, smart bombs, and of course, “stealth” as a technology. They stretch the truth only a teensy bit saying stealth aircraft have been around for years, “Lockheed’s U-2, A-12, SR-71, and D-12 drone all utilized techniques which gave small amounts of radar countermeasures” – the A-12 and SR-17 were essentially variations on the same SR-71 design, as far as stealth is concerned. The D-12 was sort of a mini wing-and-engine-pup to the SR-71.

Testor’s concept model of the then mysterious stealth fighter was vaguely triangle-shaped like the real stealth fighter turned out to be (pear-shaped fits inside a triangle, right?), and employed special angles, seamless manufacture, and exhaust cooling like the real stealth fighter does.

No matter what, it’s pretty cool-looking or at least pretty fun. I had to have one of these back in the 80s and was so excited to have it finished and get some feel for what a stealth fighter might look like. If you’ve seen the old pictures of the ‘Have Blue’ stealth fighter prototype, you’ll see the tail fins even tip in instead of out like the Testor’s F-19. They must have had some decent contact who knew about the program.

Of course I had to also build Testor’s concept stealth MiG back then too, so I had a matched pair. Some how it was way cooler than the US stealth fighter in that delightfully freaky American conception of the Soviets we had in the 80s, ala Foxfire and other things.

I got my F-19 kit for cheap off eBay, looking a little smashed. The smashiness included breaking off the iconic pitot spike on the nose of the plane, so I’ll have to jimmy something up to make that work or remake it.

As an inexpensive model that’s already got some flaws, I’m going to have fun doing this one how ever I want. I think wheels up since I got kind of screwed out of that with the F-104 disaster. Should be a fun build!