DoogsATX

NFN - is that olive drab? Didn't know there were any OD Widows...

 

Also remember seeing them in NMF is very early 60's flying out of Westover AFB in Chicoppee MA.

Northrop originally intended the widow to be black but the Army, in all it's wisdom, said that it must be painted like all the other military planes so the early P-61A's were painted OD green.  Later, they decided to see how well they could be spotted from the ground using different color schemes at night.  They tried OD green, flat black and gloss black.  When the test was run they had search lights on and had each plane fly over.  Each of the different schemes flew over and they could see both the OD green plane and the flat black plane but they never saw the glossy black plane.  At first they thought it didn't fly over.  When they radioed and found that the plane indeed did fly over they asked it to fly over again.  Again, even with search lights pointing at it, they couldn't see it.  Pilots of this bird will tell you that in the glossy black, a widow is damn near impossible to see.  From then on the widow was painted glossy black..  :)

On with the build...

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If you look closely, you can see that I cut out the forward windows.  Wanted to have these windows open for my model.

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 Made a new gun sight here...

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One more for today.   :)

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Loving those checkerboard pattern on the spinners,

Man...I'm going to have to build me a Widow one of these days. Not for awhile though...the Mossie just barely fits in my cabinet. I'd been planning to add some display shelving for the bigger kits, but now that we're building a house, doesn't seem any point putting more holes in the current one! 

Also broke down and bought some aftermarket bits for this Mossie. The kit tailwheel is embarrassing (strut and wheel molded together as two halves), so it's getting replaced by an Ultracast one. Then Quickboost mudflaps/fenders. 

Doogs the Mossie is looking great and the gun barrels are awesome,where do you buy Gator grip would like to try it out

Nfn that  Widow is awesome great work!

Doogs: Looking good! Love those metal gun barrels.

NFN: Wow, looks like you're almost done, looks great!

Gator Grip glue can be ordered from their website.

Mostly finished up the office on my P-61. Glued the fuselage together tonight.

Guys, your builds are progressing along awesome. Doggs, I love the guns and think you should use them on the Mossie, NFN, you prop spinners look amazing, you are really doing that kit some justice. Gamera, I love those seat belts, are the AM or did you do them?

I started on the Gekko the other day and when I get back from this trip I will post some pics. I am not too far along, I just did the painting of the Titanium and black stuff and assembled the guns, but hey its a start.

Speaking of pic's I may be going to the USAF muesum tomorrow 24 Feb and would be willing to take some pictures if any of you need any reference shots. Just let me know and I will see what I can do.

nfn and gamera: amazing work. I've heard that kiit was impossible... guess not. Don't know if you've seen this site... pretty neat stuff.

Herc: The seatbelts are from the Eduard interior set for the kit. I'm not entirely sure it's worth it though since most the detail you sand away on the kit and replace isn't that big an improvement. Still the seatbelts do help a great deal. I just painted them a light tan and hit them with a medium brown wash to bring out the details and then scratched away the paint on the buckles to let the metal show though. Guess they could use more work but they look ok to me when the canopy is sealed up.

Jbrady: No such thing as an impossible kit, just lots of extra work Still so far things seem to fit fairly well, just requires more putty and I'm afraid I'm going to sand a lot of the raised detail away. I don't have the skills or patience of NFN to rescribe the panel lines and details. Still I'm going to try to put the biggest most obvious stuff back. When I hit her with the black paint I'm not sure how much will show anyway.

Thanks guys.  My goal with this widow is to make it as accurate as possible.  I want this widow to look authentic and with as few mistakes as possible.   I have no knowledge of anyone ever doing as much detail to a widow as I'm attempting, even with my feeble skills, and I hope those of you who like widows will appreciate it.

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Each time I add a few items I take a photo or two .   I have more photos to come.

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 In this next one you can see the cradle for the foreward landing gear.  I later added the ladder stops and other photo etched stuff to this wheel well.

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Here I started adding antennas in the front and the rear ladder cables.

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Here I added the latches for closeing the hatches and as you can see, all the hatches are attached. 

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The red on the gunners hatch is a handle used for opening the lower portion of that door.  Most people miss this.

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Not far from completion now.  :)

NFN,

Looking awesome!

Better pics. Main assembly is nearly wrapped. Few bits and such before I move to cleanup. Think I'm going to wait to attach the dipoles and radar antenna until at least after I'm done sanding. 

and the drilled out .303s and 20mms

Doggs,

Looking great. You did a fantastic job on the pit. It looks like there are some nasty seams you had to deal with this kit. Please say it aint so as I have this one in the stash

Hercmech

Doggs,

Looking great. You did a fantastic job on the pit. It looks like there are some nasty seams you had to deal with this kit. Please say it aint so as I have this one in the stash

Thanks!

What seams are you seeing? Overall, I wouldn't put this kit on the same level as some other Tamiya efforts (their P-47, etc), but the fit is worlds better than the Eduard 109 I just finished. The gun bay door seems a bit narrow for the fuselage, the bomb door fit could have been better, and the separate wingtips are a pain, but apart from that everything went together well. I think maybe the seams (like the centerline seam) seem worse than they are because I haven't done anything with them yet...

The seams I saw were the centerline and the ones ont he bottom of the nacelles. I know pictures can show things worse than they are. I look forward to seeing it all done up, as you do great work.

Gamera the office is looking great

Doogs the Mossie's coming along nicely,looks like a good fitting kit to me and a real clean build you've got going to boot.

Hey Greg got another build if you'll allow it,ca'nt let these Allies overun the Gb can we? I just got the Ar-234B-2N in from an e-bay victory

I'm still waiting to see if someone will do the Fiat Cr 42 CN, or the Russian Pe 3 Bis.

Night Fighter Nut

I'm still waiting to see if someone will do the Fiat Cr 42 CN, or the Russian Pe 3 Bis.

Wow...I didn't even know what a Pe-3 was until just now! I'd be tempted if I didn't have enough other kits in the stash whispering sweet nothings into my ear!

There is also the French Potez 631...   Yes the French had a night fighter too.  Wasn't effective but they had one.  :)

Night Fighter Nut

There is also the French Potez 631...   Yes the French had a night fighter too.  Wasn't effective but they had one.  :)

Well at least it fit in with most of the other equipment they had.

TREYZX10R

Night Fighter Nut:

There is also the French Potez 631...   Yes the French had a night fighter too.  Wasn't effective but they had one.  :)

 

Well at least it fit in with most of the other equipment they had.

You can't beat their French Press for coffee.

Night Fighter Nut

There is also the French Potez 631...   Yes the French had a night fighter too.  Wasn't effective but they had one.  :)

Yes, the white flag made it all too visible.

White flag?  That is funny!  Too bad a lot of them fought pretty hard for the Vichy, though.

Trey, the Arado sounds good.  Just give me the particulars, and I will add it too the roster.

Cheers,

Greg

Greg thanks its a 1/48 scale Hobbycraft AR-234B-2N flown by Kurt Bonow with the Erprobungskommando at Oranienburg March 1945

Hah, that's funny! I did a Potez 631 night fighter about six months before I joined this site!

I was very happy with how the camo came out the the canopy was a mess, you can tell it still doesn't fit all that well. This is the 1/48th Azur kit. Not the worst limited run kit I ever built but still it was a PITA.

The 631's main problem (the 630 medium bomber as well) was like a lot of aircraft in not being a bad design but the engines were under-powered making the plane slow and sluggish. Plus the fact that radars early in the war were so big and heavy that the plane didn't carry one. The French would spotlight German a/c from the ground and vector the 631 to the area. Many other nations tried the same thing and it never worked very well for anyone.

Gamera that is some awesome work on the Potez ,nicely done! I like the nose art too!

Gregbbear

White flag?  That is funny!  Too bad a lot of them fought pretty hard for the Vichy, though.

Oh I know, France gets a bad rap. Poland moreso IMO (love that apparently the Brits and French advised them to delay mobilization to avoid provoking Germany...), but France too. 

Still, hard to pass up a good France joke...

The Potez is very nice looking indeed.

Doogs, I was just saying that the French seemed to fight more effectively when they were Nazi puppets.  And their planes were certainly more effective when flown by Poles and Finns.  I definetly wasn't standing up for them.  If the truth hurts.... in their case anyways, ignore it!

Cheers,

Greg

Thanks guys, always liked the looks of the 630 and 631. Too bad they were so under-powered.