Instead of starting another dead end thread (of which I probably have many) I've reviving this old one with a new title and a new kit. I lost motivation with the Monogram kit pretty quickly when it became apparent my modeling skills weren't good enough to make what I had in my mind so what little progress I made got shelved. However, since this was a project I intended to still pursue I still browsed ebay every now and then seeing if any new goodies came out and late last year I saw HK Models surprisingly came out with a whole new kit, so after looking at it a bit I decided to buy it. For the last 11 months I've been working on and off (mostly off) on it since needless to say a lot of stuff went on in 2020, but I've started working on it again.
I'll start off with a word on the kit. I'm aware of the couple issues it has, namely the fueslage being a tad too fat and the outboard engines sitting a little too high, but they don't really bother me. Although some shortcuts were taken detail wise the kit is engineered well and the biggest thing for me is the look and fit of the clear parts....night and day better than Monogram. The Monogram kit certainly still has a place in the 1/48 market so I can't claim the HK kit is better. It just depends on what you want to get out of it. And for me, the HK kit is better suited for what I have in mind. That said, there are a couple issues with it being called an "Early G". Those things are the ball turret supports, the enclosed radio gun and the wing tip fuel vents. The ball turret supports are molded integral with the spherical housing that was only seen on F models. The enclosed radio gun was not factory fitted until mid to late G production and the wing tip vents on the kit are the less common single vent toward the rear of the wing.
First off are the mods I made. Since Man O War II is a 25-DL, that meant staggering the waists.
I then cut away the elevators to droop them, modified the landing gear since they were molded fully extended, cut away the pilot side window to model it open (the bottom rail broke off but will be easily fixed when installed), and filled in the single wing tip vent and added in the more common twin vent that this particular plane would've had.
Right now, my attention is on the cockpit. I added seats made of milliput, covered the sidewalls in aluminum foil to replicate the fabric covering and then also tested my sanity by cutting away the molded on oxygen bottles and replacing them with Resin2Detail pieces I had bought a couple years ago. The center control pedestal is franksteined from the kit part, part of a True Details piece, styrene and Eduard PE. The kit control columns were reworked with miliput canvas boots at the base and Monogram control yokes.
And this is what I have painted up so far. I plan to work on the wood floor this weekend and hopefully get the widewalls done as well. Vallejo metal color silver was used for the floor and the green I'm using is MRP acrylic interior dark dull green (MRP-A009 I believe).
-Matt
On The Bench: 1/48 HK B-17G "Man-O-War II"
On Deck: 1/48 Tamiya P-38H, 1/48 Revell PV-1