ChuckD Posted March 24, 2019 Author Share Posted March 24, 2019 As of today, I'm officially done with the cockpit. This is a big milestone for me as its where I've stalled twice on this project, so I'm really happy to be done with it. In the end, I think it turned out well, though I'm still on the fence about the pre-painted Eduard stuff. In some cases, it looks pretty artificial. While it does add detail in a lot of areas, it still catches my eye to look unnatural. I'm debating on whether or not to use them further in the bomb bay and radio rooms. Again, I'm going for a natural metal finish on most interior sections. Eduard chose to use interior green in their parts, which kinda sucks. It will have to do, I suppose. I had to move the fire extinguisher holder in order to clear the sidewall. Stupidly, I followed the Eduard instructions for placement without checking for interference with the sidewall. Once the sidewall is in place, the errant mark is obscured completely, and let's face it, none of it will ever be visible once I button the whole beast up, so what does it matter anyway? Again, the eduard parts are hit and miss. The IP looks nice and the seatbelts are pretty slick, but the seat cushions just look... meh. I think next time, I'd make a cushion out of ApoxieSculpt and paint it yellow instead. Again, once the aircraft is buttoned up, they'll not be too noticeable. The overhead panel. A quick mock-up of the cockpit and nose sections. Once it's all together, it looks pretty slick. I wonder how many of those microscopic parts will pop off while I'm trying to fit the cockpit, fuselage, and upper fuselage together. And lastly, here is the right wheel well. Not much to go on here, so it got a grubby black wash to simulate the omnipresent oil leakage from a radial engine, and that's about it. It's currently buttoned up and has been installed in the wing, which has been glued together. Also, I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but I've gotten both horizontal stabilizers, elevators, and rudder built and cleaned up too. I might paint the striped rudder soon just for fun. :) That's all for today. Hopefully more soon! spacewolf, Alain Gadbois, jgrease and 7 others 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themongoose Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 Awesome work! Lolking good in the mockup. Nice wood grain too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fvdm Posted March 25, 2019 Share Posted March 25, 2019 What a great progress. It all looks really nice. Keep up the good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Ray Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 Definitely a milestone completed! Looks great! That is a lot of work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dodgem37 Posted March 26, 2019 Share Posted March 26, 2019 Looks SUPER! Great show. Sincerely, Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckD Posted April 28, 2019 Author Share Posted April 28, 2019 (edited) Ideas are starting to take shape. More to follow! Edited April 28, 2019 by Gewehr 43 BradG, D.B. Andrus, LSP_Kevin and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 Looking really good, enjoying your progress. Regards. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrish Posted April 28, 2019 Share Posted April 28, 2019 Very nice work! i believe the kit is designed to have a removable upper fuselage so all that lovely detail can be seen, at the cost of, what I found to be a fairly poor fit of that upper fuselage. Just a heads up... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckD Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 Hi, all. Well, I've definitely made some progress on the Ghost. The bomb bay is done as is the radio room (save for sticking on the RO's chair). After looking through the Eduard PE kits, I decided not to use them in either compartment and just built the kit out of the box. I did this for a couple reasons. First, I don't feel as though the bomb bay kit adds much and the RO's compartment is so closed off you won't see anything anyway. Likewise, I've decided how I'm going to display this, and have opted for a wheels-up, bay-closed, cruise configuration to hang from my workshop's ceiling. Long story short: I'm not putting a ton of time and effort into the bomb bay or RO compartment. So, with those two compartments done, I'm moving on to the biggest challenge of this kit... Converting the lower turret to one of the remotely-operated belly gun turrets. I've got my work cut out for me, but things are progressing nicely. While there are a few pictures out there showcasing the externals of the Sperry belly turret, I basically have this picture to work with for the interior. If anyone has any others, I'd be thrilled to see them. There are a few major points that I have to address. 1. The turret itself (including mounting the guns inside) 2. The parallel floor boards - the kit parts are angled and follow the contour of the fuselage. 3. The raised platform next to the turret (it's on the right side of the ship in the above pic, but the kit has it on the left) 4. The gunner's station and sighting mechanism on the floor - to include the sighting blister and windows in the fuselage. 5. Mirrored mounts for the waist .50s. The kit has the left gun mounted at the aft end of the window. I've been tinkering with ideas of how to recreate the belly turret and I'm happy to report that the kit has pretty much everything I need (so far). I'm going to use one of the spare upper turrets as a stand-in for the belly. For the cylinder that extends into the fuselage, I hit upon a pretty solid idea... ...the unused chin turret. After a little surgery... The styrene blocks are there to help me set my depth and therefore the protrusion of this part outside the fuselage of the aircraft. The tape is there to take up some of the gap between the frame for the kit ball turret and the chin turret shell. These were prototypes and have been cleaned up. I sleeved the chin shell with some thin styrene sheet to give it a nice uniform appearance. Test fitting into the fuselage shows that the part is protruding just about the right depth. That large gap around the turret will be covered by a flange of styrene sheet. I found a reference photo that clearly shows a ring of aluminum around the turret, so that should cover that gap nicely. I just need to get a drafting compass to make a good circle. Riveting a circular line ought to be a hoot too. Dry fitting the turret in place shows that things are looking pretty promising. Next, I'll figure out how the heck I'm going to mount the guns. But, that's tomorrow's problem... Meanwhile, I've been working to straighten out the two walkways. This was fairly simple to do with sheet styrene. I filled some gaps, so I still have a little cleanup to do here. That long center piece will have to be cut so that I can build the gunner's station. That's the day after tomorrow's problem. While waiting for stuff to dry, I've been picking away at the right wing and engines. The good news about this kit is that there's so much to do, you've always got something to work on. Tonight I made some good progress on getting the engines assembled and painted up. Left to right are engines 4-1. Only #3 is complete at the moment. The rest need a bit of detail painting and weathering. Then they're done. Dry fitting the right wing. I've done the initial round of sanding, but I have quite a bit of scribing and rivet work to do, particularly on the engine nacelles. Their fit wasn't all that great, so I had to fill and sand quite a bit. Generally speaking, the rest of the wing went together fairly well. I painted up the turbos at some point too. And that's where she stands. Next is more work on the turret and floorboards. Wish me luck. This is more scratch building than I've ever attempted before. On 4/28/2019 at 5:46 PM, chrish said: Very nice work! i believe the kit is designed to have a removable upper fuselage so all that lovely detail can be seen, at the cost of, what I found to be a fairly poor fit of that upper fuselage. Just a heads up... Yeah, I can see through dry fitting that the upper fuselage will be a nasty fit. I've already resigned myself to having to sand and re-rivet a bunch of lines as part of this project, so the upper will just be part of the process. Generally speaking, I'm not overly impressed with the fit of a lot of the bigger parts. C'est la vie. For such a huge aircraft, it's kind of inevitable. spacewolf, Trak-Tor, cib2265 and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted April 30, 2019 Share Posted April 30, 2019 Great work mate!!! I think I miss quite a lot of the GB stuff and there's some cracking builds going on here, yours included. I too have seen the ghost at her home in Pearl and it is a shame you can't get all the way around her to see the details, but she's the second closest B-17 to me (ironically I actually work at Garbutt Field!) aside from the one still on the side of the hill at black cat pass in PNG. Tom Probert does have a wealth of experience about the B-17, and I'd like to think I've learnt a bit about the early ones on my C model journey. I am also looking to eventually make an E with the remote turret, so I'll see if I've got anything I can pass on to you.... Just a note for you before you get too far into the build..... I'm not sure how far into the war it was, but the C, D, E and even some of the early F's never had ammunition chutes and separate ammo boxes, except for the powered and tail turrets. The nose, radio room and waist guns all had ammo cans that hung off the guns (I think maybe only 100 round capacity in most cases). I'll see if I can find a photo of what I'm talking about Great build though, following on for sure! Cheers, Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckD Posted April 30, 2019 Author Share Posted April 30, 2019 6 hours ago, brahman104 said: Just a note for you before you get too far into the build..... I'm not sure how far into the war it was, but the C, D, E and even some of the early F's never had ammunition chutes and separate ammo boxes, except for the powered and tail turrets. The nose, radio room and waist guns all had ammo cans that hung off the guns (I think maybe only 100 round capacity in most cases). I'll see if I can find a photo of what I'm talking about Thanks, Craig. I understand what you're talking about. Good to know. It's probably a bit late for me to reconfigure the nose guns, but I'll keep that in mind for the waist guns. brahman104 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacewolf Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 Love what you are doing with this. The Turret mod looks really promising. Again I have to say I love your wood grain effects.. outstanding !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Out2gtcha Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 Really tremendous work so far! Loads of attractive parts in that nose for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 I knew I'd seen it somewhere! This link is to a study about powered turrets and contains some really good info about the remote ones as fitted to the early E's. Enjoy reading! https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/documents/Studies/51-100/AFD-090529-108.pdf Craig D.B. Andrus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted May 3, 2019 Share Posted May 3, 2019 Nice work, those engines are sweet! Regards. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now