Eduard B-52G Bomb Bay & Undercarriage Update Sets (for ModelCollect)

[Mike]

B-52G Bomb Bay & Undercarriage Update Sets (for ModelCollect)

1:72 Eduard

 

 

We reviewed the new kit from ModelCollect here, and although it has a few faults (don't all kits?), it's still an impressive chunk of plastic.  Eduard have leapt on it and already produced a bunch of sets, which we had a look at here, and now they're filling the gaps with another two, and they're both LARGE.  As usual with Eduard's larger Photo-Etch (PE) sets, they arrive in a flat A5 Ziplok bag, with a white backing card protecting the contents and the instructions that are sandwiched between.

 

 

B-52G Bomb Bay (72682)

The weight of the bag is due to there being three sheets of PE, as the B-52's bomb bay is hardly small.  There are two options provided in the set, depending on whether you have the landing flaps deployed or not.  If the flaps are deployed, the inner bay doors only are opened, and you leave the fuselage around the bay intact.  If you're not deploying the flaps, the bay can be posed entirely open, with the outer edge of the bay also folded out so that the bay doors extend out and up for better visibility and easier access to the bay.  This isn't abundantly clear in the instructions if you didn't already know this already, but the pictures of the set installed on their site soon clear that up, one of which you can see below.

 

 

Construction for the flaps-down option begins with removing the detail on the insides of the fuselage and replacing it with a more detailed skin with lots of additional braces and stringers added.  The retraction mechanism and short bulkheads are installed within, and the roof "tray" has its moulded-in detail removed and replaced by more detail that improves the look substantially.  The bulkheads are also cut back and replaced by more detailed skins, plus a set of "ears" that the inner bay doors later attach to, hanging almost vertically down.

 

For the flaps-up option, the moulded-in outer doors are removed, and a new bay door panel is fabricated from a number of PE parts, with a little careful bending required to mimic the shape of the removed section.  These are then attached to the bay sides in a deployed position, and the inner doors are made up (also curved to shape) and fixed to their outer edge.  There is a scrap diagram showing the correct angle for this option, but not for the other option, which would have been useful under the circumstances.  Check your references and the picture from the Eduard site below if you're unsure.  Either way, the improvement in this important area is well worth the effort.

 

 

 

B-52G Undercarriage (72683)

The smaller of the two sets, with only one large sheet in the bag, it nonetheless improves the detail of an important and open area by adding ribbed sidewalls, stringers and equipment boxes to all four wheel bays, with only the moulded-in bases of the kit boxes needing removing from the insides of the fuselage, and the meagre moulded-in detail on the bulkheads, which again is replaced by a more realistic ribbed internal skin.  Having put my head inside one or two full-sized wheel bays a while back, they will look much better with some more detail in there, and installation should be pretty straight forward.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of