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

thanks vintage, looking forward to those pics.

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.

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

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...

Holey airfoils Batman ! Can swiss cheeze fly ?

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

Chris

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,

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

"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,

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

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,

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

Hi Josh,

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

Regards,

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

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.

Josh,

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

I like how you masked the guns.

Regards,

Drew,
Very cool figures. I like the thumbs up dude as opposed to just some robot guy looking straight ahead. Nice job on the painting.

Josh,
The He is looking fine. The fit looks great.

Chris

Haven't been online much lately - but I check in on this thread whenever I can.

nice work on the figs lufbery, those things are tiny.
finally got back to the workbench, so here are some pics of the primed 111



should be ready for some paint tomorrow.

Woodbeck,

It's been extended, and a number of us (now mostly just me) have kept it going with regular progress reports.

Speaking of which, here are the two pilot figures I painted this weekend:
.

.
They're from the Orion Pilots of the First World War set of 1/72 scale figures. More info on that set can be found here:

http://www.michtoy.com/MTSCnewSite/newplastic_folder/orion_1-72/dds72003.html

Regards,

I am very confused on the dates for this build I thought it ended in jan of this year

Hi all,

Not too much progress to report right now. I'm continuing to drill holes for the rigging on the wings. I've painted the radiators, but still need to add the toule netting to simulate the radiator screens.

For a nice change of pace, I've started painting the pilot and copilot figures.

Regards,

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tankmaster7 Hey Lufbery, I've always meant to ask you this, did you get your name from the Lufbery Defensive Circle air tactic?

No, I actually got it from the guy the defensive circle was mistakenly named after: Raoul Lufbery.

There's more about him here: http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/usa/lufbery.html

The badge in my signature is the insignia of the Lafayette Escadrille -- a squadron of American volunteers who flew for France in WWI before America entered the war. This was Lufbery's first squadron. He eventually became a training officer for the 94th American Aero Squadron and took Rickenbacker up on his first flight over the lines.

Regards,

Hey Lufbery, I've always meant to ask you this, did you get your name from the Lufbery Defensive Circle air tactic?

Hi all,

The photos I took didn't turn out too well. I think I need to use my other camera with the more powerful telephoto lense.

I'll be taking more photos this weekend.

Regards,

Well,

It's often described as a long-range naval recon plane. I think it's more like a PBY Catalina or a PB4Y.

I'm not sure that qualifies either. Maybe Vintage Aircraft will chime in.

Regards,

just wondering, would a ju-290 seeadler qualify for this build? Im not sure it would.

Thans, Chris.

I'm planning on taking some photos today, but they won't be developed until next week.

Overall I'm please with how things are going, but the kit is a bit of a dog.

One of these days I'm going to build something that's easy to put together!

Regards,

Drew,
looking forward to seeing it. sounds like it's coming along great - even with the radiator problem.
Chris

Hi all,

Still cranking along....

I installed the engines on the lower wing last night. They fit pretty well (for this kit, that is), but there's a gap. I used white glue to fill it. I may need to put on a second application, but white glue is my favorite filler when parts that are painted leave a gap to be filled. Just apply with a toothpick and white off the excess with a damp paper towel.

But I've run into a problem: the cabane struts completely cover the area behind the engines where I'm supposed to mount the radiators. Most people who build this model seem to mount the engines farther forward than I did to avoid the problem. The radiators are supposed to be mounted in front of the rear-most struts.

But I didn't like the look of the engine nacelles mounted forward, so it looks like I'm going to have to drill new holes and mount the radiators immediately aft of the struts instead of immediately forward of them.

Frankly, this is a kit from molds that date back to the '50s, and a lot of it is oversized for the scale, so I'm more concerned with making it look nice than I am with making it look accurate. A dry fit showed that the radiators will look pretty good in that position, so I'm not too worried about it.

But still, the fact that there will be this error on the finished plane bothers me a bit.

Regards,

Hi all,

I added the exhaust pipes to the engines last night. The kit engines have the exhaust manifolds molded to the cylinders, but there are no pipes coming off of them. The box art shows the exhaust pipes come straight down off the manifolds, and then turn 90 degrees to run aft.

To make the pipes, I heated some thin round styrene rod over a small candle and bent it 180 degrees, forming a "U" shape. I had to do this a couple of times because my first tries resulted in the styrene rod melting through.

After getting two good "U"-shaped pieces, I cut them in half at the bottom of the "U". This gave me four exhaust pipes with 90 degree turns. I cut the ends to the same length and painted the pipes with Testors MM Acryl rust. Then I drilled out the ends.

My next step was to carefully paint the rust color onto the exhaust manifolds with a fine brush. When that was mostly dry, I glued the pipes to the manifolds (with a glue anchor on the engine nacelle) with super glue. A small bit of touch-up paint and I had the four exhaust pipes installed.

Regards,

Nick,

I'm going to be putting my bomber on a grass field with figures. I guess that's more of a vingnette than a diorama, but the principle is the same.

By the way, I've got the tail completely rigged! Now I've just got to try to tighten up the invisible thread. Like Chris, I'm going to use a heated screwdriver tip. Wish me luck.

Regards,