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Airfix Fortress III , RAF I00 Grp , No223 Squadron


DJJunis

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Hi All,

I'm participating in the STGB on the B-17. Since I posted pics at the group build I thought I'd post him here also.

I redid the throttle handles , added the seat cushions and the Eduard belts.

So far so good. Any comments appreciated.

 

All the Best!

Don

 

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1 hour ago, AndrewCJ50 said:

Will enjoy following this!

 

Love the little Air Corps message on the seats.  Does that come as a decal with the kit?

 

Regards

 

Andrew

Andrew,

Glad you're going to follow along.

Yes it does. They provide another decal of a olive drab panel for the seat but I could find no references for that one. My reference just have a " DO NOT REMOVE FROM AIRPLANE" on the seat.

The cushions are sculpted Milliput with some texturing to replicate folds and such. 

 

All the Best!

Don

 

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Cheers All,

I finished the Revell "F" last year so I was interested to see how the Airfix one compares.

The Revell kit was OK but had some issues. So far the Airfix kit is good detail wise but there is quite a bit of flash on the small parts. More on this

as we gone on. Next on the agenda is the bomb bay.

All the Best!

Don

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Good Day All,

Made more progress the last few days with the bombay. Scratchbuilt the Jostle IV transmitter and mounted in

the port side of the bombay. Next will be the aft portion of the interior. I also showed in mated to the flight deck but it is not cemented.

Quite a bit of cleaned up of mold parting lines needed to be done. No big deal just time consuming.

Enjoy the pics and as always any comments are appreciated.

 

All the Best!

Don

 

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Nice touch adding the 'Jostle' unit.  Will it be visible if you open the bomb bay?  Do you have some top secret photos of the installation?  I recall in Murray Peden's book that crews observed a worrying blue halo around the unit when it was blasting away!

 

Regards

 

Andrew

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11 minutes ago, AndrewCJ50 said:

Nice touch adding the 'Jostle' unit.  Will it be visible if you open the bomb bay?  Do you have some top secret photos of the installation?  

There are very detailed drawings and some photos in the book, Aircraft of 100 Group by Martin Streetly, long OOP, but copies available used and as a PDF

See here 

great book, originally a series of articles in Scale Models magazine around 1980

 

Neat work so far Don :goodjob:

 

 

 

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12 hours ago, AndrewCJ50 said:

Nice touch adding the 'Jostle' unit.  Will it be visible if you open the bomb bay?  Do you have some top secret photos of the installation?  I recall in Murray Peden's book that crews observed a worrying blue halo around the unit when it was blasting away!

 

Regards

 

Andrew

Andrew as Troy mentioned my interpretation is straight out of the Streetly book which I am lucky to have a copy of. You will be able to see it with the bombay doors open which is my intention. Thanks for looking.

 

All the Best!

Don

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Good Day All,

Made some more progress. 

I added the Cheyenne turret and the cheek windows now because they don't fit well and it's easier to make adjustments , fill and sand.

I use super glue for a filler in areas that will be rescribed so you don't really see the filler at all.

Now all I have left is some rescribing and filling of the Cheyenne turret seam top and bottom.

Oh by the way the Cheyenne top should be clear perspex.

Unfortunately Airfix split the turret right down the middle of it. Not sure what I'm going to do about that yet.

Considering I have five of these kits I think I better figure something out. 

In any case enjoy the pics.

 

All the Best!

Don

 

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Wow the area around the windows looks nasty in the pictures...doesn't look anything like that in reality...must be the light passing through the clear part.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good Day All,

Well here's another update. Took care of the Cheyenne turret. A portion of the roof of the turret should be clear. Not sure how Airfix missed this. So a fix was done by replacing the portion

of the roof with clear stock . The first thing I did carefully trim the clear parts back to accept the new clear portion. The new replacement piece would be the frame so I trim all the frame away. Next I cut an oversized piece of clear. I used .015" clear. Cemented it to the edge of the trimmed clear portion with Tamiya "Quick-Setting" cement.  It's got a light green cap. This stuff is awesome. Once dried , which was only a couple of minutes I carefully trimmed the excess. Cleaned it up further with some sanding sticks. Once I felt it was as clean as I could get it I coated the whole turret with Pledge, formally Future. Once that was dry I masked the portions with some die cut tamiya tape. The Eduard mask do not provide anything for the roof and they mask need to be round. So I used my punch and die set to get that done....worked perfectly. I thenshot some Vallejo air Aluminum onto see what more clean-up was required. Once that was done I rescribed the panel lines and reshot the aluminum. Even the the aircraft I modeled will be camouflaged the interior is bare aluminum. I think it turned out OK and I have a solution for the other four kits I have that will be natural metal. Oh and gun barrels were cut-off to facilitate painting. Once I put the flashhiders on they would not fit through the turret slots anyway. I also assembled the wings and dry fitted them...great fit. Now onto rescribing the rest of the fuselage and clean up the wings. Well enough jabber here's some pics. Enjoy

 

All the Best!

Don

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good Day All,

Made some progress. In fact I'm in the masking mode. Still have not assembled the main assemblies only becasue it's easier to do the masking prior to full assembly. I am using the Eduard mask which is very good. I made myself some brass templates for some panel lines that needed adding. Most notably the wing tips and the plated over ball turret area.  The location of the under nose enclsure is not correct per references. It needs to be a further back from the nose so don't use the mounting hole for it. Plus the fit is not the best. I filled the gaps with white glue. The clear parts fit really well for the most part and any gaps are filled with white glue.  However there are a couple of challenges. The rectangular window forward of astrodome took quite a bit of fitting. The nose clear has a sprue attachment point in a very noticeable place so be careful removing from the sprue. I did that but still ended up with a blemish which I tried to polish out. I ended up dipping it in Pledge, formerly Future. The cowls took quite a bit of time to line up as there is no positive locators. My suggestion is just be patient and use the panel lines on the cowl to help with the alignment. Well that's about it now into the pictures...hope you enjoy them.

 

All the Best!

Don

 

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On 11/29/2018 at 8:22 AM, limeypilot said:

Very nice! I do like the idea of brass blanks for the scribing, I might nick that idea!

 

Ian

Ian,

Glad you got an idea out of my post.  Taht the main reason why I do it. I make templates all the time. I did the same for the blanking plate for the dorsal turret on the Dambuster Lanc. 
All the Best!

Don

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello All,

Well here's another update. The plane has been primed, cleaned-up and the underside color applied. Just starting to mask.

While the primer and color were drying I went ahead and finished off some of the other bits' and pieces. Well enough of the typing onto the pictures.

As always any comments are greatly appreciated.

All the Best!

Don

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good Day All and Happy New Year,

Well this should be the last in-progress set of pictures. Hope you enjoy them. Learned quite a bit about the Airfix kit.

Some good some bad. 

All the Best!

Don

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23 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

This is a lovely build to follow because I'm getting a real sense of what the kit is like and what the issues are. Nice work!

 

Regards,

Adrian

Thanks Adrian. I tried to capture as many issues I saw as possible as I progressed.

I like the kit but it is really a toss up between this one and the Revell one. Both have issues. But in the end they are both fine replicas for me.

The fact that this is a staggered waist is good as we never had one prior. 

 

All the Best!

Don

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