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* 1/72 B-17G Flying Fortress


Smiffy

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Matchbox B-17G Flying Fortress

1.jpg

When I was a youngster, a schoolfriend of mine had one of these hanging from his ceiling.

It was all painted up as "2nd Patches" and I remember being very impressed with how it looked.

It's one of those kits I've always been curious about, but never got around to purchasing.

When this groupbuild came up, I had a little look on the KingKit website to see if he had anything interesting in stock and straight away, the B-17 grabbed my attention (especially as it was a very reasonable £9.99 :) ).

The kit arrived yesterday (along with a Hawk and a P-51D "DooleyBird", which may also get entered) and having had a chance to look over it, I think it looks to be quite a nice little model.

So I'll be building her from the box (mostly), but I'll probably use some spare decals I've got kicking around, rather than risk using the (old, tired looking) kit ones.

Hopefully, in the short time available, I'll be able to make a decent job of the old girl. :wub:

Edited by Smiffy
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Hopefully, in the short time available, I'll be able to make a decent job of the old girl. :wub:

:welcome:

The GB has been extended by one week ( 4 th July 24.00 Hrs). That should help.

Edited by Erwin
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:welcome:

The GB has been extended by one week ( 4 th July 24.00 Hrs). That should help.

Ahhh, excellent news, thanks. :thumbsup:

Just got the wings and tails glued together and started test fitting the seperate nose halves.

Have also fitted the seats and control columns to the cockpit floor and removed some ejector pin marks from the bulkheads.

Will squirt some paint on them tomorrow, when I get home from work. :)

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Awesome to see one of these turn up in this GB, its a kit I have fond memories of. And still have in fact:

DSC01045.jpg

As built by me and my dad around 1986. Ersatz staining added by me around 1989 (first attempt at weathering anything). It survived innumerable trips to the third reich, fending off attacks by a Matchbox Me-109E, Airfix Me-109G, and Hasegawa FW-190A, often being ably defended by the 'Dooleybird' Matchbox P-51. It's also got several thousand hours of ceiling time on the clock, before being placed in deep storage about 10 years ago. It was gracefully retired to my oldies shelf about a year ago :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still working on this one.

If you dont know this kit, the nose section and the tail turret section are seperate parts from the main fuselage.

I've glued the parts to their respective fuselage halves in order to get a better fit.

The nose went on okay, with a bit of shimming, but the tail seemed to be quite a bit larger in diameter, so I just flooded superglue over the join and then attacked it with a coarse file. Then I smoothed it down with various grades and finished off with a polisher.

The wings...seem to be made of rubber or something. They're a bit thin and quite flexible and I've been having a bit of a 'mare with 'em.

Again If you don't know the kit, you have the upper and lower halves, which I joined together first and then added the upper halves of the engine nacelles into deep recesses on top of the wings. Most of this week has been spent trying to make good these joins.

Problem is, with the wings being so flexible, the joins at the trailing edge keep splitting open.

This morning I finally got all the joins to an acceptable finish and applied some Mr surfacer, just to make sure.

Then I attempted to re-glue one of the trailing edges (again) and as I was doing it, a section of the leading edge & nacelle cracked open too. :rolleyes:

So I've re-glued that, clamped it down and put it aside to set.

Going to try and get all the clear parts glued in this afternoon and finally get the fuselage together.

If I do, I'll put some pics up.

Onwards and upwards. :pilot:

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Problem is, with the wings being so flexible, the joins at the trailing edge keep splitting open.

Tell me about it, the wings on my Lysander keep popping open along the leading edge as well. They'll be full of superglue by the time the model is finished I suspect.

Very nice and extremely cool. B)

Thank you :) (The no.4 prop is still with the model by the way, it has just lost its internal retainer so keeps falling out). I never saw another one in the flesh, so interested in seeing how this one comes out.

Cheers. :popcorn:

Edited by mumbles
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