Monogram's venerable old 1/48 B-17G

[WymanV]

 (no Heavies Group Build would be complete without one, would it?)

 

 This is an excellent opportunity to pick up on a build that was hardly started and long stalled (and for good reason). First, the kit-an older release of Monograms 17G:

 

 

 Now, the fun part: This will include nearly all of the aftermarket I have accumulated over the years as well as a decal sheet I picked up specifically for the build:

 

 

 

 As the title states, this will be Miss Conduct of the 418th BS/100th BG. Always wanted to represent the Bloody Hundredth in the collection and this one's a doozy-I call these the full bug B-17; NMF, short nose, cheek guns, staggered waist and Cheyenne tail (and radio gun delete too, BTW). And besides, Miss Conduct is a bit of a hottie...

 

 Found this on the interwebs somewhere:
B-17G-90-BO 43-38525 MISS CONDUCT of the 418th BS/100th BG, Thorpe Abbotts, Spring 1945 Delivered to Cheyenne on 12 August 1944, this aircraft was assigned to the 482nd BG at Alconbury on 8 September. Transferred to Thorpe Abbotts the following day, it became 'LD-A' within the 418th BS. Returning to the US on 2 June 1945, the B-17 was issued to the 4168th BU at South Plains and finally to the 237th BU at Kirtland, before being scrapped in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in February 1946.

 

 This also included a pic of the original nose art, but again, it's rather racy...

 

 On evaluating this build about a year and a half ago, I dismissed the True Details waist section resin set. I'll save it for a 17F build in the future. With the waist windows being staggered, it would be extra work to modify the resin parts and I would be better off scratchbuilding the new details inside and with the sealed windows, it would all disappear anyway. So I started with the nose section and here's where things got dicey:

 

 

 Note the horrible fit and the mis-alignment. It's not real clear in the pic, but the window frames were full of bubbles and needed work. After some consideration I went with strip styrene to make new frames:

 

 The mental picture looked good but in practice, the styrene cracked making that corner and in the end it didn't work as planned/hoped. After a year or so of sitting on The Stalled Pile I was making a brass fuel tank for a R/C FW-190 when the thought hit me that I could make those frames from thin strips of sheet brass.The brass is soft enough to sand the fuselage curvature into one side and make them fit in there quite nicely.

 

 So. I'm winding down a furniture building kick I've been on since August (a computer desk and an entertainment center being the significant accomplishments from that binge) and I have a couple of WW I projects well underway on the bench right now but once I wrap those up, I'll dig this and some sheets of brass out and see what I can do to clean this up. I'm sure trying to make these sets work will provide me with plenty of stumbling blocks along the way but it would be nice to get past this one. And being a full bug build, it's getting rescribed too-not because it's correct by any means, but it's a lot nicer in the end than trying to recreate/repair/replace raised panel lines. Recreating the lapped metal look would be ideal of course, but I'm not that young.

 

 Ken

[Bigasshammm]

Nice. I didn't sell this kit to you did I? I had nearly the exact package when I eventually sold my 1/48 Forts. Can't remember who snatched it up though. 

 

Lots of work for the allotted time. You'll be busy. 

 

(Odd new forum glitch this has been sitting unsent since the day you posted this)

[WymanV]

 Most of my B-17 kits are from the bay, along with most of the extras. The Verlinden set is a long ago purchase when Squadron was still mailing me monthly fliers and a lot of it has been used up on other builds. The bomb bay remains along with all the hypothetical bits in the set (like the German 7.92mm machine gun barrels) that'll likely never get used on anything.

 

 I think I have 8 more of them in the stash, with most of them being the Revell F kit. And I have plans for them all

 

 Ken