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Dirk's 1/72 Academy B-17E "Old 666" 43rd Bomb Group


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  • 4 weeks later...

Last we left old 666 I was having problems with the windows staying in place and the fuselage closing up cleanly. With file in hand I shaved down the aft bulkhead between the bombay and radio operators room. Did some dry fitting and we were back on track. But before I can reattach the fuselage halves I had to reinstall the 3 missing windows. This time instead of using the window glue I used regular liquid cement which I applied with a thin paint brush.

next the haves went together and clothes pins and tamiya tape was used to hold it together. next using my sons Legos I fashioned a cradle to hold and support the fort without damaging the bottom turret.

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From the top you can see the fit is a lot better now. Before I reworked the bulkhead the gap was almost 1/16 of an inch.

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From the bottom looking into the bombay

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Did I ever tell you about this guy Murphy? Well he wrote some laws and wouldn't you know he came to visit me again. Just as i was placing the plane into the cradle I popped another window out. %&$*!!!! Fricken!! $&%*# FRICKEN Son of a... :evil: You get the point

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Till next time, Thanks for taking the time to look at my work.

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Last we left old 666 I was having problems with the windows staying in place ... ...I popped another window out. %&$*!!!! Fricken!! $&%*# FRICKEN Son of a... :evil: You get the point

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It's called... BATTLE DAMAGE - dag nab it!

THAT'S your story; now just stick to it.

b'sides none of those other guys will know the difference....... halo.gif

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If you've been following the history along with the build you may recall the part of the story concerning George Kendrick. George was the ships only waist gunner. He had replaced the original single side mounted 30. cals with twin 50. cals in each window. He also had spare machine guns mounded to the fuselage and along the catwalks just in case any of them jammed. If a gun would jam he would toss it over board and replace it with one of the spares he brought along. According to Jay Zeamer George was the screwball of the crew. He even had a machine gun mounted behind the ball turret through the floor of the aircraft which brings me to the next part of the build.

To the best of my knowledge no photos exist of Old 666 so the only thing I have to go by in the way things were setup are the eyewitness accounts of the crew. Now except for the passage I posted back in posted earlier from jay Zeamer I can only speculate how George set this gun through the floor. That along with some creative embellishments on my part will all I have to go by. So here we go. In order to have a gun usable through the floor one has to speculate he had also had some kind of window to see through.

Here I marked the area out using a spare waist gunners window. I thought about using a bubble window like on the top of the nose of the F model but decided not to.

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Here is the window in place.I drilled and dry fitted the machine gun barrel but won't mount it till sometime after the beast has been painted

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Next I moved onto the wings. I have a lot of seem work to do in this area. I also need to remove the carburetor intakes

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Till next time, thanks for looking.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Back to Old 666

Here I masked off the area where a single .50 cal machine gun will be mounted for use by pilot Jay Zeamer. Because of the angle of the nose I needed to level out the attaching point so the the gun will fire straight and level. It's hard to see the difference in these photos but should be noticed when the gun is eventually mounted.

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After more prep work the wings are ready to be installed

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Dry Fitting

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Glued in place. I believe I have the correct angle of the wings set. The tips should be just about level with the top of the pilots windows. The gaps you see will be filled in with evergreen styrene

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Here is what I used o fill the gap where the wing meets the fuselage.

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Horizontal control surfaces in place

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Now that the wings are in place I had to modify my lego jig.

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The last thing I did was fill the gaps with Mr Surfacer 500 and let it sit over night

Till next time thanks for looking

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Looking really good! I was surprised at how big those gaps were at the wing roots! Great recovery, and I'm really enjoying watching this very, very interesting bird progress along.

Cheers,

Mark.

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Thanks Mark

Last nights advancements included the masking of old 666 for what will undoubtedly be several passes with the airbrush.

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Ready for some paint

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Thanks to those following. Till next time

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That must've taken ALOT of paint. I'm making a post war Navy F4U and I've filled the cup 10 times already and I've only done half the plane. :rolleyes: Albeit I have a Tamiya HB which has a small cup. Nice work, keep it up.

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  • 1 month later...

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