BACK IN THE SPOTIGHT--THE BOMBER GROUP BUILD (Medium and Heavy bombers from all eras)

Josh,

Your HE 111 is looking pretty good! What are you using for a primer?

I like how you masked the guns.

Regards,

thanks, chris and drew. i use mr. surfacer 1000. so far ive had real good luck with it.(knock on wood) i just painted the white id bands so hopefully ill be finishing up pretty soon.

here are some new pics of my painted plane, badly i might add. its to thin, needs another coat.

Hi Josh,

There's nothing wrong with applying several thin coats. It looks good so far.

Regards,

Josh - Sweet - after looking at all those dark scheme 111's in the recent Battle of Britain mag that FSM put out - it's cool to see one in a desert scheme.

Drew - just thinking - How are momma and the Lufbery 2b coming along ?

Chris

Chris,

My wife, Robin, is doing great, and little Lufbery (we're actually naming him John Richard) is doing great as well. Thanks for asking.

We've entered the third trimester and everything seems a lot less abstract than it did a few months ago.

The plan for today after work is to tear down paneling in the second bedroom so I can start hanging drywall later this week -- then I'll drill holes for rigging before I go to bed.

On a side note, I've found that my home repair skills and my modeling skills tend to overlap.

Regards,

Drew,

Agreed - not much of difference between filling seams in drywall and filling seams on styrene. A different media, a different scale, but all the same skills. I only wish drywall didn't require so much cleanup - but I guess that's for the "Baby's Room GB" on some other site...

Chris

"Baby's Room GB"

That's great!

Just stay away from the "Baby GB"... I only had one other modeling buddy for our 1/8th scale human.

Back to this build: drilling the rigging holes takes a while with the pin vice, but a motor tool would be way too fast and too likely to cause damage to the model.

And anyway, it's not as if it takes that long to drill an individual hole -- it's just that each strut gets 3-5 holes drilled around it at each end.

Regards,

QUOTE: Originally posted by Bossman Josh - Sweet - after looking at all those dark scheme 111's in the recent Battle of Britain mag that FSM put out - it's cool to see one in a desert scheme.

yeah when i saw this decal sheet, i knew i had to have it. i didnt want to do another BOB scheme, ive seen enough of those. after the first coat it didnt look so great, but after the second one cured it looks a helluva lot better. of course i had some paint seepage at a few of the trickest spots to mask. now she is waiting for the for the future to fully cure, and receive some markings

Hi all,

Just a quick bump to this topic. I've been more busy building a nursery for our baby, who is due in November, than building my model. But, I've managed to steal a few moments here and there. Mostly right now, I'm still drilling holes for the rigging. I've got all the holes drilled in the top wing, and now I'm doing the same for the bottom wing.

Regards,

Holey airfoils Batman ! Can swiss cheeze fly ?

I wish you steady hands, patience, and a good bit o'luck my friend.

Chris

QUOTE: Originally posted by Bossman Holey airfoils Batman ! Can swiss cheeze fly ? I wish you steady hands, patience, and a good bit o'luck my friend. Chris

It makes one wonder...

I'm almost done. I've got the lower right wing drilled and now all that's left is the lower left wing.

I'm sneaking in a few moments at a time in between work, grad school, and building the nursery.

I'm a littl worried about mounting the top wing and getting all the struts aligned...

sounds like theres quite a few holes your drilling. well finally finished my He-111, theres more pics in the aircraft forum, but here are a couple

ghettochild- Great looking He-111 it really came out nice.

Well As soon as i get some pics taken of my two bombers I building ill be able to post them up. One it an LB-30 Liberator ,the export version of the B-24, using the Monogram B-24D, and the other is a B-17D in 1/48 using the Monogram kit and the Koster conversion kit, plus Im scratch building the interiors of both of them, about 200 individual parts per bomber at this point with about a hundred more to do.

The skies the limit,

V.A.

thanks vintage, looking forward to those pics.

Hi all,

Quick update: I finished drilling! I had to make a very quick repair when I dropped the plane and the tail snapped off. Luckily it broke at the attachment points and a little super glue put it right back on. The control cables to the tail kept if from flying off.

My next big step is mounting the upper wing on the lower one. Wish me luck.

Regards,

Josh,

Your He-111 looks great! Thanks for sharing the photos.

Regards,

Drew,
Sounds like luck is with you after hearing about that "tail plant".

To all,
Luck was with me this weekend too. Remember that pesky nat insignia decal that I've been looking for for the B-24 wing ?.. No - I didn't find it... But I was able to get a replacement for it at the local IPMS show this past weekend. Had to buy a decal sheet for a B-25 in order to get the right one. The show, in Rochester, NY was a very small turnout of entries. I can't complain though. I couldn't enter any cuz I simply couldn't stay for the ending. But it is always good to see other people's work. Also came away with two incredible bargains: A Matchbox Westland Wessex (That I've wanted to do since seeing the unbelievable build article in FSM a few months back.) for 2 bucks. And a 1/72 Eduard Albatross V Profipak for 7 bucks. Cha Ching !

My 8 yr old son and I had a good time - although he was a little bummed that he couldn't enter his Ferrari Modena... (he's not an airplane kinda guy) Oh well, there's always next year.

Chris

QUOTE: Originally posted by knight667 I'm in: 1/48 B-29 "Special Delivery" 1/48 B-17G "Chow Hound" 1/48 B-17F "Memphis Belle" The B-29 is already complete...probably doesn't count, huh? The other two are in progress (still waiting to receive the "Belle").

Good grief! I can't believe I'm such a slacker! I've completed all of these aircraft and posted no pics! I'll take some tonight and post tomorrow. Sorry for that!

Okay, so here's the pics I promised. I'll post links, so that I don't bog down this thread too much.

B-29:
Entire aircraft, nose art, cockpit view

B-17G Chow Hound:
Entire aircraft, nose art, tail

B-17F Memphis Belle:
Entire aircraft, nose art, tail

Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed building them!!

Very nice job on all of them John. That's a whole lotta modelling wrapped up in those three kits ! Did you do the two B-17's at the same time - like an assembly line ?

I really like the nose art on Chow Hound - very cool. Thanks for posting.

Chris

real nice job john. it take me forever just to build one of those big bombers.

Nope, built them all at seperate times. I just love B-17s.

John,

Great stuff! I really like the B-29. You cockpit and nose art, especially, look great.

All,

I've got the top wing mounted on my MB-2! I'm in the home stretch.

Regards,

Hi all,

Back again.

I've got all but two of the struts installed. Installing the struts on the port wing went pretty well, but for some reason the wings are farter apart on the starboard side, so the struts are too short by 1/16th of an inch (or so).

What I've done is wrap thin plastic strip around the top of the struts that are too short. This extends them a bit and looks okay to boot.

Regards,

OK, back in the saddle again.

Finally finished the decaling. Need to spot cover some areas with dullcoat, do more weathering, and then install the cockpit side windows. After that - I just need to figure out how to display the monster.

Chris

Chris,

It's good to read that your build is almost done.

Quite frankly, I'd probably have given up on my kit if it hadn't been for this group build.

I took more photos, and hope to have them posted in the next couple of weeks.

Regards,

Drew,

Keep up the good work. WWI models are relatively rare on this site (and probably in general), but I think they are among the most impressive finished products. Rigged bombers are even fewer ! You'll have a really unique build when you're done.

Whenever I see the 1/72 Roden Felixstowe flying boat in magazines or in the LHS, I think: Someday ! That'll be a long term project.

Chris

Thanks for the words of encouragement, Chris.

Tonight and tomorrow morning is the final push. There's a model show at my local Hobby Town USA, and I'd like to enter this plane.

I need to glue in two more struts, do a little bit of paint touch-up, install the radiators, rig the wings, and paint and isntall the landing gear.

I may not finish in time, but I think I can do it! If not, I'll still have significantly more done by noon tomorrow than I do now.

I'm getting pretty fond of the WWI-era biplane bombers. Roden makes a couple of nice ones, but they require a lot of work -- as you say: a long-term project!

Regards,

Hi all,

Naturally I didn't finish the model in time for the show. However, I've got all the struts installed, have started rigging, have installed the aft Lewis gun and Scarff ring, and installed the radiators.

The struts on the right wing ended up too short due to kit fit issues. So I wrapped some thin, flat styrene strips around the ends to extend their length.

For the radiators, I "painted" some wedding tolle (a fine mesh fabric) with a Sharpie marker to make it black, and then cut it to fit the back of the radiators. I had to sand a huge ejector pin mark off the backs of the radiators, and in the process destroyed the raised mesh pattern there. I used white glue to afix the mesh to the radiators.

As mentioned previously, the radiators do not fit inside the cabane struts as they should due to kit fit problems. So, I installed them just aft of the cabaen struts. They look okay there, so I'm not going to worry much about the lack of accuracy.

The Aeroclub white metal Lewis guns and Scarff rings are fantastic! They look great painted with MM Acryl gunmetal paint.

Fitting the landing gear will be tricky, but no trickier than anything else with this model.

Regards,