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Aftermarket 1/144 B-36 decals?


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Looking forward to it.  I need replacement decals for my B-36D (It's already assembled and painted so unfortunately I don't have a kit to loan you 😉 )

 

SN

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On ‎6‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 4:51 PM, Drifterdon said:

Hey Dutch,

I got a pretty comprehensive sheet in 1/144 several years ago but I don't recall who it was from.   Seems like it was a private fella making and selling them on his own.   I know I don't have his email any more but I'll check the sheet and see if I can figure out who made it.   It did not come with instructions but the subjects on the sheet were on the interweb so it wasn't difficult to find out what markings went with what plane.

Don

Hey Don,  HABU!  How about a color scan to see what markings are available, please? You know where I'm at. R/ Dutch

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Well, I step away for an afternoon and you guys go full retard on me.  :woot.gif:

 

Kursad, thank you for offering to create a decal for all of us 1/144 Braille scale guys.  I never intended it to get there, at least this quickly.  I know you already have a ton of other decals on your plate, for which I and others are also patiently waiting.  So I thank you for your kind offer from the bottom of my heart.  That said, I will lend you my B-36D kit and the Schiffer photo chronicle book.  I have to send you a CD of P-3 Orion pics anyway, (if I can get my CD-ROM drive to write to a CD,) otherwise it will be a thumb drive.  I will also put some other aircraft on the thumb drive. Are you still at the 78709 address?  

 

Kindest regards,

Dutch

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Kursad,

A box is heading your way tomorrow with Hobbycraft 1/144 B-36D kit, Schiffer book: Convair B-36 peacemaker: A Photo Chronicle, a thumb drive with several folders of various aircraft photos organized by unit or service, and Aviation News Service 1/72 plans for the B-47 Stratojet.  There is still some room in the box, so let me know if you need a Hobbycraft 1/144 B-47 kit also.  You can return them when you're done with them as I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy in the interim. 

R/ Dutch 

 

 

Edited by Dutch
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2 hours ago, Dutch said:

Kursad,

A box is heading your way tomorrow with Hobbycraft 1/144 B-36D kit, Schiffer book: Convair B-36 peacemaker: A Photo Chronicle, a thumb drive with several folders of various aircraft photos organized by unit or service, and Aviation News Service 1/72 plans for the B-47 Stratojet.  There is still some room in the box, so let me know if you need a Hobbycraft 1/144 B-47 kit also.  You can return them when you're done with them as I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy in the interim. 

R/ Dutch 

 

 

 

Whoa - thanks. If there is space, I would not say no to the B-47 kit - I will just take some measurements and photos, and send them back before I leave the US for vacation in mid-July. Thanks a lot for lending these to me!

 

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7 hours ago, Dutch said:

Kursad,

A box is heading your way tomorrow with Hobbycraft 1/144 B-36D kit, Schiffer book: Convair B-36 peacemaker: A Photo Chronicle, a thumb drive with several folders of various aircraft photos organized by unit or service, and Aviation News Service 1/72 plans for the B-47 Stratojet.  There is still some room in the box, so let me know if you need a Hobbycraft 1/144 B-47 kit also.  You can return them when you're done with them as I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy in the interim. 

R/ Dutch 

001.jpg 

002.JPG

Teachers pet!    LOL

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/19/2018 at 5:56 AM, Dutch said:

Hey Don,  HABU!  How about a color scan to see what markings are available, please? You know where I'm at. R/ Dutch

Heya Dutch.  This is a pic of what the decals look like.  I have no recollection who I bought them from or who made them.  They are on a single sheet of decal paper and are actually quite nice.

B-36 Decals.jpg

Edited by Drifterdon
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Don, It looks very much like a scaled down version of Warbirds Decals sheet 72002 with some walkway lines from 72003. Hang on to it.  But I am hoping that Kursad will be able to provide some different markings.  R/ Dutch

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Well I had no real desire to build this kit as 1/144 is not really a scale I build in except for my airliners. However when Kursad announced his intention to produce decals my interest got peaked. I always trust Kursad's decal sheets and now I am interested. I don't even have a 1/72nd kit as it is just too big so this 1/144 version would be better. I also seem to remember that my local hobby shop actually has a bunch of the Hobbycraft kits on sale so I should pick up one. Not too many parts I would guess.

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It's a relatively simple kit, and for a B-36 1/144 is plenty big.  The biggest issue with the Hobbycraft B-36 is the wing dihedral.  On the real aircraft, the wings are flat across the top when viewed from the front, with the lower surfaces angling up as the wing thins out toward the tip, giving the wings an apparent dihedral.  For some reason, Hobbycraft reversed this: the kit wings are flat across the bottom, while the upper surfaces slope down toward the tips, giving the wings a distinct droop.  

 

Since the top and bottom of the wing are each a single peice, I cut the lower wing into right and left sections, the made a cut in the center of the upper wing and added a shim to spread the wing root and correct the angle.  Of course, this will throw the landing gear out of alignment, so it will need to be corrected..but I haven't gotten that far yet.

 

The leading edge intakes are also rather crude, and could stand to be rebuilt.

 

SN

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  • 2 weeks later...

At the risk of derailing this thread, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here are the Hobbycraft B-36 wings as molded, with the built-in anhedral and very crude intakes..

 

PGKOpJmh.jpg

 

..and here are some pics of my modifications..

 

rLFhELkh.jpg

 

AbpvUiHh.jpg

 

I opened up the intakes first, then added "splitters" from some sheet stock...

 

LPAuztOh.jpg

 

key0Jtch.jpg

 

VVBtoB0h.jpg

 

1s5eEnZh.jpg

 

Once the wings were glued together, the some filler and sanding blended the intakes in nicely.

 

Also, the way Hobbycraft designed the kit, the props have to be "trapped" between the top and bottom wing halves, making them impossible to paint.  I modified them with separate shafts, so they could be attached at the end.

 

K4iB4GGh.jpg

 

3M6QFdnh.jpg

 

Looking at these pics, I really need to get back to this project and finish it!

 

 

SN

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Steve,

 

Nice job on fixing the wing!  That's a pretty big error on Hobbycraft's part.  The props and intake fixes are awesome as well.

 

Once you fix the wing though, I'm sure it's going to throw the main landing gear out of wack.  Have you come up with a fix for that yet?  Maybe just some sort of extension?  Gear up?

 

Thanks for the photos of your build.

 

-Derek 

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I'm still trying to decide if I want to finish it gear up, or re-align the mains.  The latter shouldn't be too difficult..I figured I'd probably just enlarge the mounting holes a bit to give the gear some "wiggle room," then just use a fair amount of superglue to get them to stay at the correct angle. 

 

Thanks for the kind words.  Here's a rendition of the Hobbycraft kit I ran across at the IPMS National Convention a few years ago, built by 1/144 master Karl Knable..part of a magnificent display of the history of SAC.  I chatted with him about it, and he came up with the same fixes for the wing and intakes that I had.  He also added homemade vacuform canopies..something I do not intend to do.  I tried different methods of doing the canopy frames..masking, decal strips, adhesive foil strips..and finally just said "screw it" and hand-painted them with a fine-tip brush.

 

nPBwNXFh.jpg

 

JDaFmWNh.jpg

 

DhdxTFqh.jpg

 

We're going to be visiting Pima Aerospace Museum in a couple of weeks while at the IPMS Nats in Phoenix.  I'm looking forward to seeing their B-36.  That'll make three of the four surviving complete airframes that I've seen in person.  Gotta get out to the Castle AFB Museum in Atwater, CA sometime so I can say I've seen all four!

 

 

SN

Edited by Steve N
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No chance of derailing this thread Steve!   Great inputs on how to fix the wonky wing from the B-36 kit.   I'm bookmarking this so it's there when I start work on my kit.   It would be nice if one of the mods even pinned it so it was always there.   Along with other fixes that would improve this kit.

Don

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