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1/48 Monogram B-29 as RAF Washington B.1 *Finished!*


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This looks great Alan,....I managed to get hold of one for £15 and I`m at roughly the same stage as you are! I was jut going to ask whether you had decided to leave the bomb bay in bare silver or not but you`ve just answered that for me,.......BUT,.......what colour are you painting the wheel wells? I`m torn between silver or Interior Green!

Cheers

Tony

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BUT,.......what colour are you painting the wheel wells? I`m torn between silver or Interior Green!

Cheers

Tony

Very valid question, I decided on interior green simply because i did the bomb bay in natural metal - since the rest of the exterior will also be natural metal, I went with the green on aesthetic grounds. Strictly speaking, if the bomb bay is natural metal, the likelihood would be that the wheel wells would be as well. :shrug: I will be doing the gear doors and bomb bay doors in all natural metal though.

Al

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Good God, is that thing big enough? Looking great, but I think (indeed, I know) that my wife would kill me...

My wife hasn't seen it yet! I've already lined up a great excuse "But we don't really eat at the dinner table these days..." I'm sure that'll work! :hanging:

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Told you it would look good Al !...great stuff old fella...

Not sure about the wheel well colour though I seem to remember being told that they were chromate green as protection but not 100% sure, have to ask around our sig chaps. but as no ones going to be stupid enough to try and pick it up and turn it over I don't suppose it really matters that much, (unless of course you plan on using a mirror base :doh: )....

is that thing big enough? Looking great, but I think (indeed, I know) that my wife would kill me...

By thunder how many times have I heard that !...sometimes she's referring to the models as well....

Al, hang it from the bedroom ceiling...only way to go, you could relive the good old days...

Don't fancy going for this scheme do you !

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/6/0/3/0747306.jpg

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Thanks very much guys.

Told you it would look good Al !...great stuff old fella...

Thanks very much sah!

Not sure about the wheel well colour though I seem to remember being told that they were chromate green as protection but not 100% sure, have to ask around our sig chaps. but as no ones going to be stupid enough to try and pick it up and turn it over I don't suppose it really matters that much, (unless of course you plan on using a mirror base :doh: )....

Well, I've ended up with the nose gear well in chromate green, the main gear wells are interior green. It's called hedging your bets!

By thunder how many times have I heard that !...sometimes she's referring to the models as well....

You are a laugh a minute aren't you :rofl:
That's exactly what I'm going to do. Shinier the better!

Really getting into this build now, and I also have a halogen heater for the shed ;)

Al

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Just had a shufti at the Walkarounds page on here: looks like the main wells are Interior Green, but this is a restored aircraft. Spar faces where they pass through the fuselage are Zinc Chromate. Anyone got any photos of Hawg Wild at Duxford? It's a long time since I've seen her, but I think her wheel bays are also Interior Green.

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Somehow I think that this will be a work of art. But how ironic as Alan is turning his modelling thoughts back to aviation subjects, I'm thinking about maritime...

Looking forward to seeing this one progress!

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I managed to get another 50g into the front end of the tunnel - a very convenient location for nose weight, top tip from me :)

tn_DSCN5005.jpg

Al

Hope you don't mind my observation........ but there should be a hole in the top of the tunnel so that the crew can use the Observation Blister to take either astro navigation or sun shots to help with the navigation, so if there is no hole they can't get into that observation blister which means you may have to move the weight you hid there.

You could stick the weight to the side of the nose wheel bay as it looked as if you had a little space there.

Gondor

Edited by Gondor44
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Hi Alan,

If this is just out of the box then the only thing I could say is watch out for :-

- Its a tail sitter

- The tunnel is short

- Main canopy is poorly molded. It will crack when you try to force it into shape.

- Props are wrong if not cuffed for "Boxcar" ...also remove turrets with "Boxcar".

But I can see your building a little bit more than out of the box. The gear doors are wrong as are the bomb bay doors will require scratch building. The shape of the engine cowls is wrong...see cutting edge resin set. The flare around the gun turrets is wrong (very difficult to correct). Check all resin props as they may be short and hubs wrong given the aircraft you wish to model. The each main canopy pane glazing is flat and tough to replicate. Overall the main wing looks thick but never put a measure to it. I have a 1/48 B-50 project underway....

Best of luck with this...

PHIL

Edited by LongMan2
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Some decent points raised here:

Hope you don't mind my observation........ but there should be a hole in the top of the tunnel so that the crew can use the Observation Blister to take either astro navigation or sun shots to help with the navigation, so if there is no hole they can't get into that observation blister which means you may have to move the weight you hid there.

Thanks for pointing that out Gondor - I have been making a plan to replicate this without drilling holes. I was going to build a tunnel perpendicular to the kit one which fits the astrodome opening, and use some artistic jiggery-pokery to create a "shape from shading" opening beneath.

If this is just out of the box then the only thing I could say is watch out for :-

- Its a tail sitter

- Main canopy is poorly molded. It will crack when you try to force it into shape.

- Props are wrong if not cuffed for "Boxcar" ...also remove turrets with "Boxcar".

Thanks for those points Phil - I can fix the tail-sitting with all the lead in the nose, while the props, canopy panels and frames are coming from aftermarket replacements.

But I can see your building a little bit more than out of the box. The gear doors are wrong as are the bomb bay doors will require scratch building. The shape of the engine cowls is wrong [...] The flare around the gun turrets is wrong (very difficult to correct). Each main canopy pane glazing is flat and tough to replicate. Overall the main wing looks thick but never put a measure to it.

There are WAY more issues than those, I'd be happy to list some of them if you want! For me it's all about the look of the finished article rather than perfect scale fidelity, so I will absorb all the issues you mention (and all the others!) as long as I can make a good-looking model of an RAF B-29 Washington at the end! ;)

I have a 1/48 B-50 project underway....

Best of luck with this...

Thanks for the good luck wishes Phil, although you might need more than luck if you're turning this kit into a B-50, especially if you want to correct all these inaccuracies!!! :yikes:

Thanks for the generous comments so far, hopefully more from this build soon!

Al

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  • 1 month later...

Been off this for a while due to the :cold: conditions, but today was useful!

tn_DSCN5022

This is the beginnings of the cockpit just to see if the various colours worked together (I thought they did).

So I pressed on to produce the finished interior:

tn_DSCN5023

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Of course, most of this won't be particularly visible, but hey!

To help as much as possible, I'm using the vacform canopy set from Squadron:

tn_DSCN5025

Sadly, upon test-fitting, the front canopy section doesn't fit very well. It's as if the pattern was made from a completed nose section as there was no allowance for the smaller canopy size to fit the kit recess. Rather than make lots of easily messed-up cuts, I'm going to use the kit canopy and bombardier's nose window, which is a shame.

The only other interior readily visible (through three large blister windows) is the waist gunners' station.

tn_DSCN5026

To get a good fit, I chopped off the bit behind the bulkhead because a) it's incorrect for most production aircraft, featuring bunks instead of an electronic warfare station, and b ) because it's completely invisible.

With all seven subassemblies in place, I went ahead and joined the two fuselage halves together. There were some impressive gaps which I filled with superglue. After removing the tape and sanding down, I was very happy to find the seams have come out very well:

tn_DSCN5030

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This is without any putty at all, just sanding and smoothing down with 600/800 grit. The less sanding I can get away with, the easier it'll be on getting a good surface for the Alclad.

The bomb bay interior has come out nicely now it's all stuck together:

tn_DSCN5031

So.... a huge sigh of relief and hopefully a good foundation for continuing.

Cheers,

Al

Edited by Alan P
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Alan

Just spotted this and remembered that I solved the tail sitter problem when I did a B29 back in the eighties by the expedient of opening one of the fuselage doors at the rear - I forget which one - and adding a metal ladder for access for support. It doubled as a prop. Probably totally incorrect but as a working solution I felt it was better than trying to hide a pole somewhere or loading it up with too much weight that might test the landing gear

Nice build by the way

John

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Remember building one of these back in my early teens, it's a monster kit, probably the biggest I've ever built, but loved this one. Sadly the only thing I have left of it is the figures that come with the kit. Had to hang it from the ceiling, wings level and the tip of the fin just about touching the roof.....only place to keep it!

You're build is looking superb and I'm liking the ingenious means of hiding nose weight.

Looking forward to the next instalment.

Rgds,

Eng

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Hi Alan,

Had a look through your thread and your build looks impressive, I see a version of the Enola Gay is now out in this scale I will keep an eye on the progress looks good though.

Guy

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This is coming along brilliantly Al,......but then I didn`t expect anything less!

I`m thinking of doing my Washington as the ECM aircraft with peeling arctic red tail and wing tips and number 55 on the side,.......with the turrets removed, I think that it had the cuffed props,.....I hope so? If not I might just opt for one of the black bellied ones!

Cheers

Tony

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Thanks very much you guys. I've been slacking due to the return of Arctic temperatures, but the promise is that from Thursday things will be warming up and I can really attack this monster.

I've been toying with making the wings detachable, but the only viable way is to cut them outboard of engines 2 and 3. I should have done it before assembling the wings so I would have been able to make the cuts and build up the inner support structure. Too late now, so this will just have to be my biggest model and biggest transport headache!

Thanks again for looking, and the kindly encouraging comments so far.

Al

EDIT: typos!

Edited by Alan P
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  • 1 month later...

Back again at last! Modelling is back on the menu.

Finally finished the major rescribing work. Was a big chore that put me off for a while, but I've done it.

tn_DSCN5032

tn_DSCN5033

Only a few small slips easily rectified. Thankfully it's not too bad a job for such a big model.

The biggest headache I've had so far is with the nose glazing. It doesn't fit (wrong shape at the front, so it doesn't form a circle shape or match up with the fuselage sides at the extreme forward end) so I'm still in the middle of sorting it out without ruining all the masking. (Fat chance! yet another fiddly job to repeat at some point...)

tn_DSCN5034

Spot the huge gap at the front where it meets the nose cone:

tn_DSCN5035

Probably end up removing the masking, sanding the whole thing to death, and then hopefully polishing out all the scratches and re-masking. The glazing on the real thing is embedded in the airframe, so there can be no seams AT ALL.

15930091275_1422b0ebf6_b.jpg

(photo credit © Martin Carey on Flickr)

Glad to be back at work on this - also will be starting a MiG-29 for the 80s NATO vs Warsaw Pact GB and an HMS Kent (1/350 Type 23) as a dual build with a friend locally. It's all go!

Al

Edited by Alan P
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