EDWARDS WILL DISPLAY X-15 PROJECT MOCK-UP.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

For a piece of aviation history, the X-15 rocket plane mock-up didn't look like much when it arrived at Edwards.

Originally used for fitting parts meant for the real rocket planes and now property of the Smithsonian Institution, the mock-up sported a large crack in its lower vertical fin, had major dents and dings, and was in bad need of a paint job. It was going to require several hundred man-hours to get it back in shape.

``It was a piece of junk,'' said Chief Master Sgt. Ernest Conrad of the 412th Equipment Maintenance Squadron Fabrication Flight. ``It was like a junk car.''

An Edwards crew is preparing the mock-up for display at the base's annual open house, scheduled for Oct. 9-10. This year the base is celebrating its 50th anniversary of being named Edwards - for Glenn Edwards, an Air Force officer who died piloting an XB-49 Flying Wing - and the 40th anniversary of the start of the X-15 program.

The X-15 is, in the words of Air Force historian Richard Hallion, ``the most successful research airplane of all time.'' The flight test program ran from June 1959 to October 1968 and included 199 flights, taking pilots to the edge of space.

The mock-up was actually used for the X-15 program. North American Aircraft, now part of the Boeing Co., used the mock-up for fitting parts when building and modifying the X-15 craft.

After the program ended in the late 1960s, the mock-up was sent to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., where it was mounted on a pole, said Doug Nelson, curator of the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum.

A few months ago, the mock-up was put on loan to the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kan. The museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Nelson said.

The museum agreed to lend the mock-up to Edwards.

``It's the only thing available to us to celebrate with,'' Nelson said. ``It's way too expense (about $250,000) to manufacture one.''

There were three actual aircraft and two mock-ups built for the X-15 program. One aircraft was lost in a 1967 crash that killed pilot Michael Adams. One aircraft is on display at the National Air and Space Museum and the other aircraft is at the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The second mock-up is at an aviation museum in Pima, Ariz.

Restoration work on the mock-up is scheduled to be completed by Oct. 1 and work is running ahead of schedule.

The work is being handled by a small group of military and civilian personnel: Staff Sgt. James Beaty, Michael Jackson, Victor Yaw, Airman 1st Class Aaron Jackson, John Puls, Len Swanson, and Senior Airman Chris Butler.

The crew built a trailer for the mock-up, using discarded parts from previous museum projects. Because of the fragile nature of the mock-up, the crew tries to move it as little as possible.

``It's not an aircraft,'' Conrad said. ``It's not built like one. If you move it too much, seams open up.''

The squadron's composite shop smoothed out the dents and dings. The huge crack in the lower vertical fin was fixed and the whole thing was sanded down, primed and re-painted.

The workers made stencils for markings after studying historic photographs and examining a pole-mounted X-15 replica at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Dryden Flight Research Center.

Nelson is hoping the base will be able to keep the mock-up through April, when the new building for the Air Force Flight Center Museum will open.

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Photo: Doug Nelson, curator at the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum, views a mock-up used to build and modify the X-15 rocket plane.

Jim Skeen/Staff Photographer