NigelR32

Yeah, don't I know it!! it seems as I go along the pin marks and fit gets worse and worse.!! Hopefully all will be fine when I start on the Gun itself?

Patience my dear boy!! All will become clear.. eventually!!

Great to see you over on this site SD. I'm sure your great work will be very well received. I know your work with foil will blow everyone away on here. Love the IP!! I assume you're not going to flatten the nose then?

The hanger frames are both together now, after the hours and hours of getting rid of all the pin marks. I have painted Mr Surfacer into the joins, as these should be strips of angle iron, without a big gap along their length!! Once dry, I'll give the seams a rub with an alcohol soaked Q-tip to remove the excess and wash the remainder into the join. Thanks for looking in..

As promised, I'll give another update on some corrections in the cockpit area. It all began when I started looking at the cockpit and dry fitting it all together... I realised that the way the kit was made, the pilots legs would need to be very long indeed.. just look at an unmodified cockpit and you'll see what I mean. This was before I got the dimensions off the blueprints. Then this struck me.... Notice the position of the rear of the IP in relation to the window.. compare this to a real airframe.... So, I move the bulkhead back by about 4mm from memory, this entailed shortening the cockpit floor to allow the move, therefore bringing the pedals and IP into the correct position in relation to the windscreen and seats. Here's a shot of the IP rear against the window now.. It was at this point I thought I'd do something about the very visible rudder pedals, as I felt the kit parts were very basic.. And the scratch built pedals and supporting framework. Note also the framework on the bulkhead which will be visible through the lower hatch in the port fuselage. The location of the hatch is spot on in the kit. Staying in the cockpit, I wanted to replicate the sidewalls better than the OOB parts, so I basically studied many pictures of restorations and came up with this.. Note the shorter floor, the lowered walls on the floor entrance and the removal of the "lump" in the kit floor at the front of said entrance. The seat frames are to sit on top of these angled walls rather than to the side of them. If you're really interested, and are still awake, just ask and i'll post any shots you may wish to see if you also want to superdetail your kit. thanks for looking.

Oh go on then, make it really bad so throw my toys out the pram and go away forever!!

I think you understand it all too well Cees!! Maybe you could help me out... It is a nice reunion, only wish it was an actual reunion with all our models on show!!

Oh Thank you so much for putting this build online!! One really can't follow too many B-25 builds.

Hey SD, great to see you over here on LSM. Please post some of your amazing foiling skill here, I'm sure we will all be amazed at the work you do!! I am being nagged to get the B-17 on here so that's exactly what I'm doing. They're a really friendly bunch on here, it appears that you can correct a kit without being slandered for doing it!

So, you're not bored yet then ?? Over the next few posts I will be showing you all how I've corrected the cockpit floor length, cockpit sidewalls, bomb bay bulkheads, angle of the bomb bay bulkheads, long nose, long tail turret, long tail, incorrect ratio between elevator and tail plane, step removal in radio room, window size and position in the nose, fat fuselage, tail wheel position, tall turtle deck and anything else I can't think of right now.

Nick, The price is at the top of the page on both my reviews. I always use Hannants for a guide to retail price in the UK.

Thanks Lawman, Up until these last two, all my reviews have been self funded, but Eduard have now kindly agreed to supply any large scale sets I request, so at last I'm getting some recompense for the hours spent putting all this together. I'm glad you're going to have a go at the staggered window fix. It really is quite easy, just think of it as a lump of plastic rather than a £250 kit!!

Blimey!! It looks as though it'll run!! Looking forward to this build...

Thanks for your comments on my review style guys. I think this set is well worth the money as the kit parts are not a patch on these for quality or accuracy... you may decide the engines are a little OTT, especially if you want to go the "in flight" route. I personally think they are worth every penny, but then I don't have a tight budget or a Mrs bank manager watching what I spend... I actually think James should give me the first Lancaster in the country to review, I'll send it straight back, I promise!! If anyone would like to see a review on any of the Eduard B-17 AM, please let me know, I have every single piece they've produced!!

OK guys, I'll take this one step at a time. There are a lot of errors that I have corrected and this will turn into a long thread. as already mentioned, this kit will build into a great model of a B-17G, but I have decided to correct whatever I see is wrong. I'll start with what I think everyone considers to be the biggy, namely the round nose. Basically the kit's nose is round in section, whereas it should be flattened over the top from the Perspex nose back to the windscreen. The front station, where the Perspex joins the nose is round, but from there back to station 3 which is the instrument panel bulkhead, it's flat. A very kind gentleman on another forum posted the blueprint dimensions for the fuselage. I have taken the measurements and scaled them down to 1/32 and then accurately reshaped the front section of the fuselage to accurately depict a real B-17G. Here's the round fuselage form with the correctly shaped IP sitting inside. I have then cut down the top of the bulkhead to match the IP You may have noticed another error here.. the access door into the nose section should be offset to starboard, so here we have the door moved over.. And now the bulkhead placed inside the fuselage, with rubber bands holding it all together. the sharper eyed amongst you may notice the extra work on the bulkhead and also the position of the bulkhead within the fuselage....more on that later... Before the nose itself can be reshaped, we must remove the astrodome mounting and then refit it after all the surgery is done.. That's all for now folks. Tomorrow I'll show you all how I reduced the diameter of the fuselage because the kit is just too fat, it's also too long in the nose and tail area's.

Moving slowly on with this one.. I thought I should post a little update and a small piece of advice for anyone building this kit.. So, here we have the chassis frames pretty much done. I spent about 4 hours earlier today rubbing down the Mr Surfacer in all the ejector pin holes in the main frame but have finally got round to sticking the assemblies together. The tops aren't glued on yet as I need to get inside the central box section with some paint before I box it in. Now, here's a tip for anyone contemplating this kit... regarding these brackets that go on the foremost upper surface of each frame. Basically, the small legs that are supposed to be stuck up against the back wall need packing out to allow the gussets on the side panels sit correctly between the bolts, like this.. I have added some stock to the legs to guide the back wall into the correct position. You can see it in both the parts and in the assembly here. On the left part the strip is 0.25mm and the right is 1mm. Thanks for stopping by, more to come tomorrow when hopefully these rail cars will be all but finished?

So, you wanna see all of it?? I don't want to bore anyone, or start any bad vibes...

This is one VERY impressive build, I particularly like the finish you've achieved on the underside. Please keep the pics coming, that camo is very impressive...

That's a lovely build, and all done in 12 hours??? Wow!!

Many of the people who look here will already have seen this work on another forum. As I am no longer a member of that particular forum, I thought I'd put up some of the work done here. I will start by saying that this thread is not a kit bashing rant or intended in any way to disrespect the work of HK Models. We are all aware that there are issues with the kit and we are also aware that many people are happy with the way it looks out of the box, I for one am not happy with the appearance, so I am pulling out all the stops to correct it and make it a little more pleasing to my eye. I want to build this model as little Miss Mischief, but may have to change my mind as the NMF will be very difficult to achieve with all the cutting and modifications that are being done to the fuselage. We'll have to wait and see..... The first thing we notice if we want to build LMM (Little Miss Mischief), we need to move the starboard waist window back to create a non-staggered waist window fuselage. The recessed area for the glazing will be very difficult to reproduce, so I have decided to cut the window aperture out, along with a corresponding piece of plain fuselage and simply swap them over.... This is the inside of the fuselage, where I have marked out the lines I will cut. Note I've used the ribbing as a guide to keep everything square. Following some careful scoring and cutting with my razor saw, I have a £250 model with a big hole in the side!! Now, if we turn the cut out part over, we can refit it into the hole and hey presto, job done... No.. note the moulding for the clear part is different top and bottom... We need to cut the removed section in half and replace the front with the rear and vice versa... here's an interior shot to show what I mean. the plastic stock is there to lift the aperture into the correct position and to fill the gaps resulting from the saw cuts. Here we are, a non staggered waist window fuselage.. If you intend to build this kit this mod should be considered as it will really open up your options for the finished scheme, especially if you don't want to build it in NMF.

Just to back up what Lawman is saying here, I have taken a pic of the kit gun breeches, as mentioned, just a little strange?? They should all be the same size.

I take my hat off to you Tom, both for your amazing scratch building skills and the news that you run a modelling club. I actually started at age 6, and taught myself to read because if I couldn't read, I couldn't follow the instructions.. yes, old kits instructions consisted of a couple of exploded diagrams and a list of words, telling you to glue the oleo, part no 45 to port main U/C leg. We learned what each part was called as we built... Hampden vs Sunderland Build both!!

You are indeed a very lucky man!! That's a beautiful oldie of a kit. Looking forward to seeing it come together.

Hi Tim, I'm all too aware of the shortcomings of having a puppy. You may remember I lost my dear Lola in October, well, when she was a puppy she destroyed a three seater Sofa, but never attacked anything else. I am loaded with chewy toys for teething puppies and also a play pen and crate. I'll let you know how I get on I'm gonna go take a look at the N1K2 now... Did you see my reviews on the B-17 resin?

B-17G guns Eduard Catalogue # 632026 Available from Eduard for 29,95€ Bunny Fighter Club price: 25,46€ Eduard have recently released their resin Gun set for the HK Models 1/32 B-17G, and what a set this is!! The set, numbered 632 026 is supplied in the now common Brassin Packaging as shown here. The set contains a total of 27 resin parts and 24 PE parts on a single fret measuring 23 x 25mm.My sample exhibited no issues with bubbles or warping. There were also no breakages, which is testament to Eduard's packaging, are you listening Aires!! There are four different styles of gun, automatic, left and right loaded and Manually operated, left and right hand loaded. Notice the extremely crisp detail on the breeches and also the cooling holes on the barrel jackets. here I have tried to show the detail on all four faces of the breeches. As previously mentioned, VERY crisp. The Breeches in the HK kit are made in a range of sizes, which is incorrect, then the barrels are also made in a range of lengths to give the guns the right "look". The B-25 suffers the same issue. maybe Eduard will make a set of guns for that kit too?? Now we come to the big feature of this set, it is not just a set of machine guns, but a complete set of replacement and updated mountings. For example, the radio room gun mount in the HK model is very basic. This set fully replaces the mount with a correct replica of the sheet metalwork found on the real aircraft. There are also upgrade parts for the waist guns. All of this is very visible on the finished model. See the instructions for more detail of the replacement mounts. Here is the PE fret, covering the gun sight parts. The instructions are supplied as four sides of A5 paper printed in colour with a painting guide, calling up Gunze colours. In summary, this set is a great addition to enhance your 1/32 B-17G. Not only are the inaccurate oddly sized guns in the kit replaced with accurate renditions of the real guns, but you will also be replicating the mounts more accurately. If there is a small downside to the set, it is that the barrels weren't supplied as separate parts to be added after final assembly. Having said that, it will be a very simple job to cut the barrels off and glue them back to their breeches at the end of your build. You may even decide to drill the breeches and fit brass barrels instead? Thanks go to Eduard for producing this great set and also for supplying the set for this review. These guns will be used on my B-17 build, I may buy another set for my B-25, unless Eduard produce a dedicated set for that kit too?