Foiled HKM B-25J Strafer - 345th BG Air Apaches - Lady LiL

[Jeff T]

Superb work on the bomb bay Brian!

 

Jeez that looks good.

 

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

Edited March 20, 2013 by JT68

[DougN]

That is a great looking bomb bay Brain, definately "mirror-worthy"

 

Doug

[Tomek]

That is a great looking bomb bay Brain, definately "mirror-worthy"

 

Exactly. It just calls for a proper presentation.

[Mebo]

Outstanding work Brian. Can i ask you what material you used to make the bundled wires? . They look so realistic.

[LSP_Ron]

Man, how can one top that! incredibly nice work

[Out2gtcha]

WOW

SUPER

 

 

Thanks Arthur.

 

Brian, Although I am quite useless I find your build very inspiring and inspirational..

 

Thanks Maru, but I would say anyone contributing positive things isn't useless in any way.

 

Superb bomb bay - wow. Great work on the wheels too !

 

Thanks Thomas, kind of you to say.

 

How in the heck, did I miss this thread ? she's lookin mighty fine there. pardner, Great details Brian

 

 

 

Ken

 

Thanks Ken..............could be easy to miss, there are a lot of B-25 builds going on right now.

 

 

very impresive build.

I ill keep watching and i love the detail.

 

Mark

 

Thanks Mark!

 

 

Just catching up on this, Brian. All I can say is HOLLY SH**, Bat Man !! Just remarkable. The wiring really sets it off ! I hope I can build like this some day.............Harv

 

Thanks Harv! (and I think you ARE................just need some paint! )

 

 

wow, now THATS a bomb bay

]

 

Kind of you, thanks Shawn.

 

 

Lovely work! Great detail... Love the wiring!

 

Much appreciated, thanks Jeroen!

 

Nice work and keep it coming

 

 

Thanks Vandy. Cheers!

 

 

Jesus H... it's a bit nice...

 

Very Kind Andy!

 

 

Brian

Amazing work. Every update just keeps getting better and better.

Keep 'em coming

 

:popcorn:

 

Thanks Peter, nice of you to say.

 

 

The only word that comes to mind is,... insanity.

 

Thanks K2! Still fun............but yes, some of the insanity as well.

 

Superb work on the bomb bay Brian!

 

Jeez that looks good.

 

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

 

Thanks Jeff!

 

 

That is a great looking bomb bay Brain, definately "mirror-worthy"

 

Doug

 

Thanks Doug...............Not sure Im going to make it to this years NATs, but hopefully might make it to some other local contests.

 

 

 

Exactly. It just calls for a proper presentation.

 

Agreed Tomek................not sure when.........but hopefully at some point.

 

 

Outstanding work Brian. Can i ask you what material you used to make the bundled wires? . They look so realistic.

 

Thanks Mikkel.........I actually did some experimenting with everything from CAT V and VI computer wiring, to my extensive lead wire collection to splitting super thin radio wire............but in the end (surprisingly enough) I found that for replicating the American white WWII wiring and its dark cable bundles, the EZ Line worked the best. You can lay out 2 - 6 strands of the thin white stuff, then wrap every few mm with thick charcoal EZ Line. Saves having to paint any wires white, and having the paint come off............and the EZ Line is quite thinner and more scale looking when in bundles than even the thinnest speaker/radio wire.

 

 

Man, how can one top that! incredibly nice work

 

Thanks Ron...........nice of you to say................Im sure its not that difficult................we all know theres always someone better! There are SO many talented modelers here its almost overload sometimes...................

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Let me take a bit here and organize myself and Ill put up some pics of the weekends latest efforts..........Pics to come shortly gentlemen.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Out2gtcha

[Out2gtcha]

I started the weekends work by addressing some of the few issues that the kit has. These have to do with the multitude of .50 cal machine guns. As those who have the kit, and or those following all the builds know there are several options for brass guns out there.

In my case, I chose the MM guns, as I like their quality, look, and Im keen on having the same consistent length barrels throughout my build. The other option is the Profimodeller kit.

I actually had this gun pack and sold it.

• Didn’t really like the fact that Profimodeller chose to cut/lengthen their barrels. The browning .50 barrel was a finite length, and I chose to compensate for HKs mistakes in this area but changing other things around the barrels to affect their length.
• I wont be putting on the cheek guns, as the Lady had hers removed, but that kit was not really cheap in the scheme of things and no sense in it when I wont even be using 4 out of them, and the rest have lengths determined by where they are on the model.

 

I went with the standard Model Master .50 cal barrels and fixed the issues by modifying the base and/or covers.

 

One of the biggest “offenders” IMHO is the tail gun. Here the barrels, if everything is placed OOB, come out looking WAY to short. Here Profimodeller chose to extend the barrels to compensate.

I chose a different path…………….

 

Using the MM barrels, I was going to modify the gun base position on the armature, but found out there was really no need.

The main issue/reason why the OOB guns look SO short is because of the OOB HKM canvas rear cover. HK chose to make this way more pronounced than it was IRL.

 

Here are some pics of generally how the canvas covers looked, both period and resto ( fair use and all ) –

 

 

 

 

Here is the OOB cover –

 

Overall, you can see just how pronounced the OOB cover is, and how much less of the guns it lets you see VS the real deal.

 

I made mine (up-side-freakin down in most of these pics FFS ) out of some textured paper towels, glued around an internal structure, then painted, dry-brushed and weathered. As you can see, mine is substantially less pronounced than the OOB part, and allows you to actually connect the guns to the .50 cal bodies, and have a closer amount of the .50s showing to the 1:1. It didn’t come out 100% perfect, but Im pleased with the way it looks –

 

(Correct side up on this pic)

 

 

(up-side down in this pic)

 

 

This pic illustrates very well, the height difference between the two parts if you’re looking at the point at which the cover stops and exposes the .50s (I placed a mixing stick level across the two here to demonstrate) –

 

 

Next up was another offender, but not quite as bad………………the waist windows. The main issue here was not so much the canvas cover………………..and not the position of the opening for the gun in the window……………. but more the position of the mount for the .50 cal itself. The OOB position of the opening is correct (in the trailing lower corner) in the window itself………….but HK has you mount the .50 dead even in the middle of the window.

 

There is LOTs you could do to improve this section of the bomber, but it all is not going to be that visible, and to be honest, HK did a pretty fair job on the waist 50s, so I only changed up the mounting position and then modified the ammo chutes. This is a super simple solution, but as I was contemplating going a LOT further in this area………………………I thought better of it, and figured my efforts were better served in other more highly visible areas of the plane.

 

I taped up the windows to keep them from getting all scratched up, and used a piece of plastic rod to simulate the gun barrel to get all the angles correct. In this case the plastic rod is just barely a smaller diameter than the actual gun barrel.

 

 

 

 

 

All I really did was to remove the OOB hole in the middle of the window and add a piece of card stock to make a hole offset to the rear of the window. Now this is NOT perfect, NOR is it in the exact 100% scale position it should be………………but again sometimes you have to sacrifice for overall fit. The corner covers fit SO well into the windows I did still want to use them………….so in order to do that you need to drill them out a touch to fit the MM barrels, and sacrifice a tiny bit of position to the rear to get them to slide in at the same angle as the covers are.

 

The secret is to move the .50 cal body closer to the window (like the 1:1 waist mounts are) as this lets you utilize the OOB cover parts, but also lets you move the .50 cal mount much more aft in the fuselage windows, like they should be.

 

Again its not 100% accurate in position and not as far aft as the real deal but a good compromise, and will look good in the end I think, with what can been seen through the waist windows in the end –

 

 

 

 

Again, a very simple arrangement chosen here, but will be effective and look decent in the end I think.

 

CONTINUED…………………………………………………

[Out2gtcha]

Now it was time to get working on the turret and tail gunners positions………………………….

 

Again, these areas were modified slightly, but not much. They are going to be visible but much less will be able to be picked out of areas like the top turret base than in other areas like the bomb bay. The tail turret compartment will be fairly visible (more so than the top turret base) under the J’s glass tail gunners canopy, so I added a couple smaller details there that really didn’t take any work of any kind, yet added a couple nice touches.

 

Got all 14 .50 cal barrels colored up gun black/blue with a combination of “Blacken-it” and a SUPER-DUPER light mist coat of MM gunmetal to take away the “rusty” effect Blacken-it sometimes gives brass –

 

Got the upper turret base done. Again much more could have been done here, but occasionally you have to pick your battles –

 

 

 

Then got to work on the tail gunners position. Here the only mods are some weathering on the seat, and a pair of the tail gunners knee pads made from Milli-put –

 

 

 

 

I also added the Martin Baker turret gunner’s seatbelt from Eduard –

 

 

 

Since I have seen so many period photos and restos with a TON of variations in colors for the turret bases, turret housing s and armor, I went with a combination of theB-25 cockP/ interior green and some MM enamel interior green for some color contrast.

 

Tiz all for now guys. All of this tedious crap took HRS and HRs………………but was really fun. More this week likely.

[mark31]

Very nice improvmend on the canvas cover.

The gun barrels looks good just like the gunners position.

Nice weathering.

Keep going i follow

 

Mark

[Guest Peterpools]

Brian

Nicely handled. The canvas covers and reworked mounting positions sure did the trick.

Keep 'em coming

:popcorn:

[JRutman]

Awesome stuff goin on here.

J

[Bryan]

This is amazing....

 

Make me realize how half-arsed and full of corner cutting most of my modelling efforts are.

 

That B-25 is absolutely amazing.

[Guest]

MY, my,my, you have been a busy boy ! Can't praise you enough Brian ! All looks just fantastic, my friend..........Harv

[JRutman]

That gave me an idea

[Puncher 75]

Really nice modification with the tail canvas cover. Your scratchbuilt cover is a vast improvement over the kit part. Great work so far! I am really liking this build very much and I look forward to when the foiling starts.

Ken