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P-61 Black Widow (HobbyBoss 1/32) + PA-18 (1/32)


TGA

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So well I'm kind of throwing myself in at the deep end with this P-61. The only model I built in recently was a Revell FW-190 F8 which was maliciously scarred and killed of by my skillful hands (something involving heat and trying to give paint that heat burned look, didn't work out...). So I'm back with attempt numero two. I absolutely love the P-61 and in my eyes it's an absolutely awe inspiring aircraft. Besides the kit I bought myself a number of books as reference and I will pay close attention to the MAAM website for reference regarding the structural design of the P-61. I am not exactly sure yet which aircraft I want to be building but I want it to be something special and a P-61 that you don't come across that often.

I really want to do an olive drab aircraft so for instance the 'Lady Gen' P-61 A5 is a very suitable candidate. This again poses a few problems because Lady Gen is, well, turetless! Oh my I see you thinking, how awful!

A turetless A5 is going to require some very serious changes to the HB P-61B kit so I'm going to take my time to look in to the required changes.

The cockpit will be the first place to start and I will draw out my plans this week so you guys can see what I'm talking about.

I will be using this topic as a major reference regarding the changes to be made: http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=45567

I did unbox my kit and I have done some test fitting of the wings, engine nacelles and the crew nacelle. So far so good. The plane is absolutely huge. Compared to an FW-190 picture this: It's about twice the wingspan, 62cm in total! Pictures will follow soon because it doesn't all work this well on my phone. Thanks for checking in, I'm committed now!

Edited by TGA
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Good choice and I will be watching :popcorn:

Guy

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So I finally got to spend some time one my Widow. After thinking about it for a while I decided to go for a turetless P-61B. Makes my life a little easier and makes the build a bit more straightforward. So I started tinkering away at stuff in a completely random order. I managed to build up 1 leg of the main gear:

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After that I started work on the nose wheel bay. I gave it a quick brush with an aluminium paint so I can chip away at it after I've painted it over with interior green for weathering purposes.

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More updates coming soon but I need to order some paint first :)

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So I ordered some paint.....and instead of Flat Black I ordered Olive Drab and Neutral gray so it's definitely going to be a P61-A now. Time to get these lazy bones into action and actually put in some effort!

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Lovely - You cannot beat a large scale radial (or two)!

MD.

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  • 2 months later...

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So basically life intervened and I haven't been able to do much. A full time job, a course and a 4 month old really takes up a lot of time! I did however decide that I wanted to do something different, special and something I have no business actually undertaking because I lack every form of skill or craftsmanship. I therefore decided to plate pretty much all of the model in metal. The picture above shows a couple of test pieces I have made. More pictures and pieces will follow soon and I hope to be showing you at least 1 completed wing before the end of this year. Thank you so much Airscale and Richdlc for inspiring me to try something with metal. It is a lot of fun, disguised as extreme frustration at times. More to come soon!!

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  • 3 weeks later...

So basically I've been fairly busy with anything but the model. Nonetheless I have made some progress. I was planning on metal plating every outer surface of thw airframe but I realised that it makes more sense to do so when I've closed of the crew nacelle. That way it'll be easier to do the metal bits and pieces. I'm currently scratch building some details in the cockpit because there's a lot of stuff in the HobbyBoss cockpit that's just plain wrong. I am trying to correct some of it from the pictures and references I can find but they don't all have to be 100% accurate. Maximum accuracy is just something I won't ever be able to attain when it comes to all this. So here's a couple of pictures of the small amount of progress I've been making.

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More to follow soon because my photobucket isn't working too well on my phone and because my excellent Airscale photo etch cockpit instrument bezels have arrived :)

Edited by TGA
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Hey Guy! Thanks mate. Like I said I hate painting and I'm quite bad at it. Nonetheless I try so here's a small (literally) update: My scratch built IP so far.

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So it's not an exact replica of the P-61 IP but it's closer to the P-61A than the one that came with the kit. I assumed the A type IP would be closer to that of the YP-61 because I read that a lot of things were changed on the P-61B layout wise after the 61A had been in action. My IP is missing a number of things, the main one is the missing last row of the RH side column of instruments. I couldn't fit any more dials in the limited space available. The decals are the excellent Airscale decals which I can highly recommend to anyone building a WW-II era aircraft!

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I got slightly side tracked... I wanted to try out my airbrush and sort of hone my skills before I got to painting anything on my P-61. I went out to my local shop and I found a really cute 1/32 PA-18 Super Cub. I bought it half price so it was 9 euro's, around 6,5 pounds. Not too bad for a second mule (my primary mule is a Revell FW-190 but that was already, badly, painted before)!

Not too impressed with the Revell kit itself though. Lots of flash and some nasty looking ejector marks. For instance on the back of the seats, in plain sight! The moulding on the P-61 kit is a lot nicer and cleaner but the price is also usually 8 times higher than that of this kit

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Edited by TGA
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So I made a little mistake on the P-61 which led to me making a new sidewall for the cockpit. Still incredibly basic bit I will fill it up along the way.

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I've also corrected the 'pedestal' on which The IP rests because it was completely the wrong shape.

It also surprises me to see that the whole cockpit tub of the PA-18 will fit into that of the P-61. Really puts the size of WW2s largest fighter into perspective.

DSC_0773_zpsyipx7rms.jpg

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Quick update. I chopped my way through the aft cockpit wall in order to open up the small access hole to the turret compartment. I have also painted the cockpit floor and the throttle quadrant. I am not too sure about the colour though but I guess it'll have to do. Next thing on the list will be finishing the cockpit sidewalls and the radio operators compartment. After that it's time to cut a bit of the forward fuselage to correct the length of the crew nacelle. Afterwards the big cannons will be put in place and the whole crew nacelle will be closed up. Still plenty to do......

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It's quite a big model to be honest mate. I can't remember the measurements of your diorama but I believe this model is somewhere around 47cm by 63cm. But the road to this being finished is a long one so plenty of time to figure out where to put it!

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  • 2 weeks later...

So finally another small update. I've tried to figure out what the best colour is to use in the cockpit. It's completely chromate yellowish is colour now but it's going to be more of a cockpit green kind of colour. I'm hoping to achieve a kind of faded look like Airscale did with his seat for the F7F. Sorry for stealing your idea mate but it looks great.

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Just for my own situational awareness I have done another mockup of the cockpit:

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I do kind of like the look it has now but it should look better if I manage to do this right. More later!

Edited by TGA
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