Robertson

Fantastic and totally convincing paint job. I rarely comment on models, but this is just something else...

Having gone into this further now I can say that the Eduard MG opening are tiny and awful, a real kit disqualifier, as well as the poor/non-existent Eduard depiction of the cowl fasteners (completely absent in the upper middle of the cowl!!!) and I replaced the Eduard gun openings with far better Airfix equivalents. All 3 cowl tops lack a slight flat area behind spinner, but fixable. Airfix has generally the best depiction of the prominent cowl fasteners, and takes to the Eduard windscreen like a champ, even canopy closed. Much better sliding canopy frame thickness on Meng and Airfix. Best str

And a glass nose that pinches to about half the size that is should... (Monogram got it dead on, and that nose section will fit the AM fuselage perfectly). OR prop blades too skinny by half (Monogram again on the mark there) OR tail hinges that are just engraved lines when they should be a semi circles meeting a recessed area (Monogram again dead on, but you get the picture)... Accurate Miniatures were so impressed by these moulds they delayed the kit's release for an ENTIRE two years (1997-1999, test shots builds seen, unchanged from final 1999 release, in 1997) while they sued in court the K

This B-25 discussion was really funny. I looked at built up examples of the 1/72 Airfix, and all I can say is I wish the 1:48th Accurate Miniatures kit was half as good (or even one tenth really)...The accuracy of the cowling, props, and especially the canopy is miles ahead of anything in 1/48. The panel lines looked quite nice, and, if not the smallest I have ever seen, they are not out of line with just about anything made in 1/72. The decals looked superb on the model. Having wasted months on resin After Market cowls, mix matching Monogram parts (nose, props, vertical tails)

Understood. Meng is much better with a metal finish, but for a painted finish, the deeper surface detail, better cockpit and undefinable "likeability" of Airfix might show up better. Meng feels bland, but I can't say why, as it is generally better. Airfix landing gear leg is bulkier/better.

The Eduard kit is better still, but sits too tall, with too thin sliding hood frames. I use Airfix legs, Meng or Airfix sliding hoods, which fit even when closed, though Meng has a center seam to erase. Eduard is the only kit to have the windscreen side windows bite deep enough into the fuselage, which all other kits are shy on. Airfix would look best with a painted scheme, not a metal finish. With a metal finish Eduard is better. All 3 newer kits are miles ahead of the old Tamiya and its dreadful prop, though the Tamiya gear would help the Eduard...

I've always hated the Monogram D with the nose glass having curved sides instead of flat sides: Now I finally see the shorter nose glass on Commando did have curved sides! So the Monogram nose needs to be shortened 3 feet to be accurate! This does not stop there: The Monogram has an inaccurate sloped spine making the rear fuselage shallower by 4-5 inches, exactly as early B-24s. But the kit does not have the raised fuselage fairing just under the tailplanes... That raised "fin support" fairing was on all shallow tail early B-24s (which is easiest to see on photos of the currently flying LB-30)

If these are the shades based on the old Soviet book with paint chips, they are likely too dark. (The book of which only 3 copies exist in Russia I mean) Eric Pilawski saw one copy, and said the book's colours have darkened over time. I believe him, because pieces buried face down or otherwise protected remnants always show lighter more vivid colours, despite never facing the sun. If Russian aircrafts were that dark, they would not have lightened in photos when the shift from black and green to gray and gray happened. But they do look lighter, including the green of the black and green...

I think the freshness (or dust?) of the fuselage paint is the culprit, making the fuselage colour look darker than the older (or less dusty?) factory black green spinner: The older spinner colour is probably polished by handling (and air friction!), or faded, and the fuselage very fresh. A fresh matte texture will not reflect ambient light as much compared to a less matte spinner. I feel this might be more prudent than assuming an oddball colour on the spinner. It does indicate a fresh paint job was very matte, somewhat at odds with some depictions.

Well I like both bombers and fighters to be in the same scale, as that is the whole point of the expression "in scale"... 1/48 is practical for both fighters and having one or two of the quads like the B-17G or Lancaster. The B-29 does overstep practicality, but it is the only WWII subject like that aside the Me-323 Gigant or other oddballs... And if 1/48 quads are so Impractical, why are we deluged with this 1/32 quad nonsense, including TWO Lancasters? So no, I will never have 1/48 fighters and 1/72 bombers in combination. I am not reasonable on this issue. Shoot

If I absolutely had to build one, I would start with the Otaki, maybe with a vacu form canopy, and definitely a good resin correction cowl (probably easy to find one on Ebay), as the Otaki kit looks right, maybe even down to the propeller hub. Otaki engraving is outstanding for the 1970s, and looked comparable to Eduard or Hasegawa. The Eduard is just one of their old bad kits, with gangly gear legs that look way too tall, and the prop hub dome way too small, as well as the entire hub mechanism if I recall. Even the cockpit was underwhelming. The only really good thing on that kit

Don't rely on drawings, especially factory General Arrangement drawings, which are the cause of most problems in other drawings... The best drawings are done by Youyuso (Juan Temma) of the "Wings of Pegasus" site, who makes accurate models, while producing the most accurate drawings in the world (with full cross-section breakdown analysis) as he cuts plastic... The Hellcat page: http://soyuyo.main.jp/f6f/f6f-1.html He chose the Hasegawa kit because of the fuselage tapering issue, yet even with all this (enormous) work I feel his final Hellcat is NOT accurate...: You

Point taken. Top side by side image the Hobby Boss is to the left. I take this opportunity to note the KH windscreen side windows do not look quite like the real ones, in that the kit's corners are crisp and do not have the slightly "rounded corners" of the real thing. This can be cheat-masked for a better appearance I would guess...

The Eduard is inaccurate in tapering the fuselage within the wing chord. The best is probably the old Otaki/Airfix from what I saw, if with a few extras.

In your dreams maybe? One way to see how the right fuselage side was re-ground is that the wingroot stubs were not...: They stick out the correct 3 mm (6 inches) on the left, but only about 1.5 mm on the right side... The stubs suggest the kit is intended be a B-29A, but it is over one feet short in the needed extra 1 foot span. (The wingroot stubs, and associated vastly different wing attachment, are what increases the span of the B-29A 1 foot over the B-29) In fact the Monogram kit is at least 3 mm short in span even for a regular B-29, and 9 mm short over the necess

Well, my Hasegawa A6M1 is still worth keeping, and adding the Tamiya canopy to...

The overall 1/32 Hasegawa shape and fuselage/canopy width (and depth!) are also wrong. I am fairly sure anything from Revell in that scale would be a far better starting point. 1/48 Hasegawa 109s share most of these issues.

The 1/48 Monogram B-29 fuselage is asymmetrically moulded, hence the ill-fitting clear parts. The same brand B-17G is a miracle of perfection in comparison to the abomination that is the Monogram 1/48 Superfortress... In the recent re-pop they tried to fix the fact half of the 16 exhausts were missing, with comical results. Prop hubs on the Hamiltons are literally 1:32 scale egg plane stuff. The Curtiss blades are woefully skinny. Even as a ceiling hanger it needs tons of help, resin cowls, squadron canopies and the turrets removed. Best advice I can give is never load it with weight, and buil

Sorry if this is an old thread, but it is not a matter of photo angle when the overall volume of the windscreen is so different... If you look at the volumes on their own, the HB is not even close. It cannot be a camera effect. This entirely disqualifies the HB kit from the very start... By volume alone, the Kittyhawk windscreen is far closer. (The Kittyhawk shock cone is an issue, but fixable in a hidden area, quite unlike an entire canopy!!!: No comparison of like with like here) Hobby Boss windscreen volume: Posted December 14, 2019 (edited) HB

The HK rear fuselage is still grossly fat and looks wrong, and by more than a small amount according to someone who has the full set of dimensions... Wish he actually spelled those out... The outer nacelles are absurdly high and really disqualify the new kit. Never mentioned by anyone is that the HK wing profile is a (wrong) cambered shape: Flatter on the bottom and more curved on the top: Following 1930s airliner practice, the real thing had a perfectly symmetrical tear drop shape airfoil, relying on the fuselage-set camber angle instead. For years I though the M

Fixing the Accurate Min. kit cowls is a tough proposition, if you are demanding on the result... Resin AM are a huge timesaver, and will usually be much better, as well as not that expensive... The compound radius needs fixing, and it must be done the exact same way all around...: That's essentially nonsense. Spare yourself and get resin cowls. R.

The easiest way to a high back is to diagonally cut the rear of an Airfix PR XIX, to adapt to an Airfix Mk XIVe front fuselage. Scratchbuilding the whole spine is extreme, in my opinion, especially if you use agressive lacquer paints... The way to do this joining is to attach the tall back rear on one side, match it up to the unmodified lowback on the other side, then reverser the process. The Eduard Mk VIII wingroot fits amazingly well the Airfix Mk XIVe, but still requires a lot of carving in the wing's lower rear thickness: The Mk XIV requires the shorter span Mk

The Hasegawa is crap, as are all the other current ones

I went for throwing in the Airfix PR XIX fuselage into the Airfix Mk XIV wings. Adapting the Mk XIV windscreen to the PR XIX fuselage, with the characteristic crisp base to be made from putty, is a lot of work. I also used the very clear, well-shaped Eduard Mk IX sliding hood (which does eventually fit the Airfix windscreen closed), but this is just a tiny bit narrow for the correct width Airfix opening (Eduard being too narrow by 0.5 mm, or one scale inch, from real aircraft measurements). After a bit of work, the Eduard hood finally works with the Airfix Mk XIV windscreen (matchi

A bit unrelated, but of interest: Ki-100 vs Ki-84 comparative test source: "Aeroplane" November 2005, "Ki-100 fighter Database" p. 61-77. (16 full pages on the Ki-100, with remarkable details, including detailed coverage of the projected high-altitude turbo-charged variant) Quote : P. 76: "At these schools, the cream of the IJAAF's instructors, all very experienced combat pilots, would give their opinion on the new fighter (Ki-100). Almost all the Akeno instructors were graduates of the 54th Class of the Army Air Academy and also highly-qualified sentai commanders in their own