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Flightline Engineering 1/48 B-29 Detail set


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Hi everyone,

This set has been brought to my attention by my aunt Gwen, a lady with a keen iterest in the Silverplate Super Fortresses. For a great while she has been intending to get a set for detailing her Monogram kit; the kit had been out of production for most of 2018, and was put back into production by Mark Buchler some months ago. Until my aunt placed an order - or at least tried - did she learn that the molds had given out, so placing orders was not possible.

Aunt Gwen e-mailed Mark to see how much time it will take for the new molds to be made again, to which Mark replied that public interest for this set had dropped off, hence he decided to wait a while until he invested more money in the creation of new molds for this set.

My point in starting this thread is to make you acquainted with this incredible set in order that public interest increases to sufficient level so Mark completes new molds and casts new sets. Perhaps most of you were not aware of the existence of such an excellent set - I was not, even though I'm a huge fan of the B-29, which I got in 1/48th scale.

Aunt Gwen has asked me to post this thread to help Mark put this set back into production soon.

Please visit the Flightline Engineering site to take a good look at the set.

Hope you, B-29 fans, will help this set be put back into production. 

Thank you in advance.

Cheers, 

 

Onigiri

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I think Mark is a member here, although nice can't remember his user namr.

 

It's a great set, I wish he'd offer a smaller set, or offer it All Carte. I would definitely be interested in some cowls, and a few other parts, but have no interest in building 4 3350 engines cylinder by cylinder for a kit I plan on hanging from the ceiling.

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12 hours ago, waza said:

I have just pm Mark to let him no that I would perches one of these kits

 

Thanks a lot, waza! Hope that Mark puts this set back into production soon. Appreciate it. :thumbsup:

 

16 hours ago, Charlie D. said:

I think Mark is a member here, although nice can't remember his user namr.

 

Oh? I wasn't aware of that. It'd be great if he replied to this thread just to let us know whether or not the set is going to be casted once again.

 

16 hours ago, Charlie D. said:

It's a great set, I wish he'd offer a smaller set, or offer it All Carte. I would definitely be interested in some cowls, and a few other parts, but have no interest in building 4 3350 engines cylinder by cylinder for a kit I plan on hanging from the ceiling.

 

Yes, quite understandable, Charlie. Aunt Gwenie had already purchased the CE cowl correction set, the Resin2Detail exhaust and supercharger set, the Metallic Details flap set and the Attic Silverplate conversion set for her Monogram kit by the time she learnt about this set, so she told me that she'd e-mailed Mark to see whether it was possible to get some parts All Carte; i.e., the engines, wheels, screws and lower nacelle halves, but Mark told her that only the engines would sell as a separate set.

Anyway, she was going to purchase the whole set all the same and sell all the other bits on evilBay.

Cheers,

 

Onigiri  

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I recently built a 1/48 scale B-29 and I have a few comments regarding the Flightline upgrade kit. I have included photos of my B-29 as reference.

 

Tires and wheels: The upgraded tires and wheels are a nice upgrade from the kit's tires and wheels. However, it would be nice if the tires were slightly flattened where they touch the ground. 

 

 

.3QfEB67.jpg

 

7TMHE25.jpg

Engines and props: There is really no need to build a detailed version of the engines. Once the cowls and props are attached there is little to be seen of the engines. I think that the original kit's props look just fine

 

 

tHzZOcb.jpg

 

nhxy99E.jpg

Turbosupercharger and exhaust pipes: The original kit's exhaust pipes are just awful (top picture). However, there is a way to use copper tubing to replicate the real airplane's double exhaust pipes without spending a lot of money. Plus, the turbosuperchargers are hidden from view once the plane is finished. Maybe I am wrong, but I did not see the louvered panel that covers the turbosupercharger?  Maybe it is not shown in the photos.  Looking at the upgrade kit, it looks like it is necessary to remove the original kits nacelles. That would be a very nasty, labor intensive project in itself and may have a negative effect on the wings strength. This mode has really long wings. Of course, if someone wished to make the turbosuperchargers visible, they would need the upgrade kit.

 

The Flightline upgrade kit looks like it is really nicely done.  It would have been nice if they included weights to hold the nose down. However, I am not sure if some of the upgrades are necessary and I'm not sure if I need to spend $110.00 to fix some of the original kit's shortcomings.

 

John

 

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pwiUbiQ.jpg

 

 

Except for a portion of the main wing and fuselage, the entire plane is finished in Bare Metal Foil.

 

I explained how I used copper tubing for exhaust pipes in this thread: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/177188.aspx?page=2

It's not too difficult to do. Just a royal pain in the butt because it has to be done eight times. A real waste of time.

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18 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

Engines and props: There is really no need to build a detailed version of the engines. Once the cowls and props are attached there is little to be seen of the engines. I think that the original kit's props look just fine

 

Hi Johnny!

First is first; such a nice build your 1/48 B-29 kit is. Congratulations! :worship:

 

Engines and propwise; and in my specific case, I've got the Monogram Superfortress Big, Bad and Ugly series which only brings the Curtiss Electric cuffed screws, so the Flightline set really helps me out, as I wish to build one of the Hamilton-Standard-screw-endowed birds. As for the engines, it's also a matter of tastes and what you intend to build.

My personal case again, I found the Wright R3350s to be some beautiful, massive, powerful pieces of machinery worth displaying. Every resin sample I bought before this set was beyond regretful by comparison, i.e., examples only showing a mass of an resin undetailed front cylinder row and just a hint of a joke of all the rest. Here you've got a full, miniaturised Duplex-Cyclone rendering of the real thing, all with prop governor, ignition ring wires, etc; if you cared to check the pictures. Also the prop hub is a jewel.

I really like piston-driven aircraft with their engines detailed - all the more so if they're multi-engined - and, whenever I built kits of such types, I discovered that covering all the engines under their respective cowls is kind of monotonous.

The B-29, especially in the 1/48th scale, has got a lot of potential; perhaps you can display a couple of engines without their cowls, as if being serviced/maintained, which makes for a much more interesting build. Sort of this one in the picture:

 

7o6257G.jpg

 

Then, the two other remaining engines under their cowls will make for identicalness so that all four engine fronts look exactly the same with or without their cowls.

Granted; both the turbosuperchargers and exhausts in the kit look awful. Your approach in fixing the exhausts with copper tube is excellent, only that the shape and orientation of the exhaust is quite different on the real thing. The shape is a bit more oval, and the orientation is directed aft with a slight curve (also, check the strengtheners inside the main exhaust).

 

YwOsHsu.jpg

 

Mark has nailed it spot-on, although I would have to try to hollow them out a bit and add the strengtheners on them.

 

4qCO1Ap.jpg

 

Now, you might have a point regarding the louvers being absent, tho. May have to enquire Mark about it, but some time ago I bought these from Resin2Detail. Maintained/serviced aircraft might benefit from displaying the superchargers and exhaust stacks without the louvers on.

http://resin2detail.com/product/ac48100

 

As for the lower nacelles, the ones on the Monogram kit are all wrong. This correction is needed because the shape of the cowls on the Monogram kit are wrong as well.

Fortunately, the correction of the lower nacelles on the Monogram kit by the upgrade set doesn't seem to affect the strength on the kit wings whatsoever, as the replaced surface is wholly supported by the provided wing spar on the kit. Strength is then restored as soon as you glue the resin substitution, and somewhat enforced when joining both wing halves and all the rest of the resin assembly:

 

xuY0x1P.jpg

 

XdLVu6p.jpg

This set is a jewel to me, and I'm sorry that I didn't learn of its existence much before, when the molds were okay, as I'd have bought three sets. That's my usual good luck. But the set really rocks my boat and, for the huge amount of detailed, nice casted pieces it has, the price is not high at all.

Cheers,

 

Onigiri

 

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YIKES!! Your top photo of a B-29 assembly line is indeed impressive. Where in your house do you keep a setup like that?  That setup must be huge!! The Flightline upgrade kit would be important when staging partially assembled planes. 

 

I have a few questions regarding the Flightline parts.

 

 

U6WDVbn.jpg

Did the Flightline kit resolve the issue of this nasty joint. This joint is a real pain to fix.

 

7zfq52D.jpg

Does the Flightline address the issue of the attachment of the engines to the nacelles? The original kit recommends that the cowls be edge glued to the nacelles which results is a really weak joint. I built a block of plastic strips that I glued to the face of the nacelle. I then glued the back side of the engines to the strips which results in a strong joint.

 

It takes a long time to finish a model in foil. My Revell 1/48 B-29 took over 120 hours to complete the build. If started doing things like building the engines, changing the nacelles, etc. the build time would really increase which would limit the number of models that I could build in a lifetime. I am a retired architect. Architects tend to thrive in the world of perfection.😀 As we all know, perfection is unattainable, but architects try their best to achieve that. When I retired and returned to modeling I decided to not attempt perfection. If I did I would never finish a kit. I just try to build a kit that gives an impression of the actual plane. 

Edited by Johnny_K
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20 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

YIKES!! Your top photo of a B-29 assembly line is indeed impressive. Where in your house do you keep a setup like that?  That setup must be huge!! The Flightline upgrade kit would be important when staging partially assembled planes.  

 

John,

Oh, no; that diorama isn't mine. I wish it were, but I don't quite remember where I got that picture from. Most probably it was from Google. I was hooked the minute I saw it. I do seem to remember it's 1/72nd scale, tho.

 

20 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

I have a few questions regarding the Flightline parts.

 

U6WDVbn.jpg

Did the Flightline kit resolve the issue of this nasty joint. This joint is a real pain to fix. 

 

I haven't got the set in order to be certain, and it's a pity that the PDF pictures on the Flightline instruction file aren't bigger - or even, in a better resolution - regarding the correction of the lower nacelles, although in the picture on step number five you can see that the offending area on the Monogram kit appears to have been addressed somehow.

 

20 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

 

7zfq52D.jpg

Does the Flightline address the issue of the attachment of the engines to the nacelles? The original kit recommends that the cowls be edge glued to the nacelles which results is a really weak joint. I built a block of plastic strips that I glued to the face of the nacelle. I then glued the back side of the engines to the strips which results in a strong joint. 

 

I think it does, indeed. Again, by looking at the PDF instruction file, I can only surmise that this part which looks like a horseshoe (cirled in red), in the resin lower nacelle correction part holds the rear end of the resin nacelle face (pointed by the red arrow). Then the resin engine is attached to the nacelle face, which in turn has got a recessed step along the circumference, where the cowl fits. It's a totally different approach than in the Monogram assembly. I think I could even open up the cowl flaps on the Flightline resin nacelle face.

 

KUfZzbr.jpg

JwktOf4.jpg

20 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

It takes a long time to finish a model in foil. My Revell 1/48 B-29 took over 120 hours to complete the build. If started doing things like building the engines, changing the nacelles, etc. the build time would really increase which would limit the number of models that I could build in a lifetime. I am a retired architect. Architects tend to thrive in the world of perfection.😀 As we all know, perfection is unattainable, but architects try their best to achieve that. When I retired and returned to modeling I decided to not attempt perfection. If I did I would never finish a kit. I just try to build a kit that gives an impression of the actual plane. 

 

Totally understood, when I've still have got unfinished kits that I started building aeons ago. Talk about perfection; it's just those aircraft I really dig that I obsess over, and the B-29 is one of them. I've had the Monogram kit stored for a great while now. Looking back, I'm glad that I didn't build it yet because I'm sure I would have regretted not to have had this set to detail and correct the many issues in the kit. When the kit was given to me as a gift, just the box size was intimidating; I was thinking where I would display this monster once built. As I said, before the existence of the Flightline set came to my knowledge, I had purchased a couple of resin engines for it in order to display a couple of Duplex-Cyclones being serviced/maintained, but those resin engines were so awful I bought the Otaki 1/48 Ki-84 Frank kit merely for its similar type of engine in order to detail at least one of the engines without the cowl.

 

I just durst not even think what I'm going to do if the Flightline set is not casted ever again... :pray:

Cheers,

 

Onigiri

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I hope that the new molds will be made and the new resin parts cast. Those parts appear to correct a number of problems with the Monogram/Revell kit. In case that you decide to build your B-29 without the resin parts, following are links to how I built my B-29 and how I solved the kit's problems:

 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/174977.aspx

 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/175141.aspx

 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/177188.aspx

 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/177401.aspx

 

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Hola, John!

Interesting piece of reading material I've got for the whole weekend; thanks a lot! :thumbsup:

 

21 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

Those parts appear to correct a number of problems with the Monogram/Revell kit.

 

Indeed, but just a few of them, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of problems left to fix even when having the Flightline set on your side. Auntie Gwenie has told me about several other problems on the Monogram kit. Good thing about her is that she's only interested in the B-29 as a whole, meaning that she is not a regular modeller; she's only got the Monogram 1/48 kit to build and that's that.

 

Gwen told me that at first she was going to build the regular version of the B-29, the ones with the four turrets, until she found out that these were all wrong in the kit. Hence, she moved onto the Silverplate version. The Attic resin conversion set she bought for it is a beauty, but the resin adds a lot of weight to the kit, so one of her clever Japanese friends adviced using magnets in the halves of the nose landing gear wheels instead.

I recall Gwenie having mentioned something related to the nose landing gear being in the wrong position with regard to the nose of the plane - can't quite remember whether it was too aft or the other way round. Oh, but auntie can rant about issues for hours and hours, sometimes I think I'm better off without knowing.

 

I will need to fish out my kit in order to check that huge nasty gap you mention at the engine nacelle; had the faintest idea it was one of the issues with the kit. Speaking of which; to get rid of that gap you mention to have sanded the wings adjacent to the nacelles. You meant both these areas I outlined in red?

 

Lnq2WQ8.jpg

 

Tell me, how far along both wing halves - from the nacelle to the wing root - did you sand? How much did you sand off of each wing? Didn't you reduce the height of the wing at the leading edge by doing so?

21 hours ago, Johnny_K said:

 In case that you decide to build your B-29 without the resin parts, following are links to how I built my B-29 and how I solved the kit's problems.

 

I concur; I'm well aware that right now the Flightline set is not a possibility, so a good alternative is in order. I really think foiling this kit is a must.

Will read your build thread through and through. Get ready for the enquiring, John!

Cheers,

 

Onigiri

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Regarding the turrets. I think that the B-29 looks naked without its turrets. The kit's turrets may be wrong, but I think that they add a lot of detail to the airplane. Remember, the overall shape of a B-29 is very simple. Very different than a B-17 or a B-24. I know that some modelers hate when I say this, but does it really matter if the turrets are a little wrong?  When I was an architect I used to build models of buildings. The models were "reduced size impressions" of a real building. They weren't perfectly reduced sized versions of the real building, because that would be impossible. It is not possible to make perfectly reduced dimensional brick joints, wood grain, granite grain  and shingles on a model. The models were just impressions of the real thing. My airplane models are just reduced sized impressions of the real thing. 

 

zn2b0lI.jpg

To fix that nasty joint at the nacelles, I sanded the triangular shaped  material shown in red. on the nacelle. . I also removed some material from the leading edge of the wing. It is not necessary to remove a lot of material, especially at the wing. Doing so would have a negative effect on the curved leading edge. 

LPlHXwq.jpg

The joint is significantly reduced in size after sanding.

 

rKmd1JD.jpg

Next came the glue, clamps and rubber bands. The wing was warped so I used my architect's scale and clamps to eliminate the warp.

 

gDusUWY.jpg

After the clamps were removed the wing was straight as an arrow.

 

 

ANsdykK.jpg

After the rubber bands and clamps were removed, a little filler was required and the joints at the nacelles were gone. An almost perfect joint.

 

I am more than happy to answer your questions. We are all here to share our experience and knowledge.

 

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So, in simple terms, the nacelles are not improperly molded i.e. molds wrongly cut, but they "warped" when removed from the molds and needed to be persuaded into contact with a bit of sanding and rubber bands.  Seems like a problem the average modeler can overcome with a little patience?  Of course it always helps to see pictures of how somebody else successfully overcame the problem(s)!

 

C2j

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There are common problems with the joint between the nacelles on all of Monogram/Revell 1/48 big bombers. Following is a B-24J. It is just a poorly engineered joint. All these problems can be fixed with average modeling skills and a little patience.

wdnenhd.jpg

Note the bad joint in the nacelle of the B-24J main wing.  Plus, the wing was warped.

 

lzKsbUn.jpg

Lots of clamps, rubber bands and  an architect's scale fix the problem.

 

xavCWdG.jpg

Sanding and filler solve the joint problem in the nacelles of the B-24J.

FIlJr25.jpg

On the finished model the joints are invisible.

 

 

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Johnny, your build log is epic! :worship:

My paps is an architect as well, so I guess you've helped me find an awesome use to his architect's scale.

Also, this is totally genius:

 

eWaBu57.jpg

 

Never thought about the good use my mum's couch cushions might provide to a modeller. :clap2:

You're the man, my mate!

Cheers,

 

Onigiri

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Onigiri,

 

Before I came up with the idea of the cushions I thought that I would have to sit in a chair and hold the fuselage between my legs until the glue at the wing joint dried 🤣😖😫

 

John

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  • 4 weeks later...

I mailed him  couple of days of ago to let him know I was interested in buying a kit and he needs enough of orders to go into production. So if you have a B 29 kit you want build and want to use his kit: let him know you want to buy one. Ask him what his minimuim order is to start production.

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On ‎11‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 8:30 PM, Craig5 said:

I mailed him  couple of days of ago to let him know I was interested in buying a kit and he needs enough of orders to go into production. So if you have a B 29 kit you want build and want to use his kit: let him know you want to buy one. Ask him what his minimuim order is to start production.

 

Hi Craig! :wave:

Welcome on board; thanks a lot for having e-mailed Mark to let him learn of your interest in the set. My aunt gets in touch with him regularly, and has already told him that I've started this thread in order that more modellers are acquainted with his impressive set.

Let's hope Mark puts the set into production again very soon.

Cheers,

 

Onigiri

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