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After the two fuselage halves have been glued together, extensive filling
was needed along the seem. In fact I needed to raise the heigth of the
model where the glass nose was to be attached, and this ended into a gap
between the two halves.
The nose section was not provided by Aurora (it was a
B-25H)
I made a shallow resin master by pouring some resin inside the clear vac
nose of the Guillows' model which is maybe closer to 1/30 or even 1/28th
scale. It was easy to reduce its size by some boiling water.
I then vacuformed the 4 sections that make the clear nose by my Mattel vac
machine.
Canopy is the one provided by Aurora, with some Future clear brushed on (here
it's taped).
Here you see the right hand waist gun station.
The clear window is a vac out of a resin master made again pouring some
resin inside Guillows' vac pieces (whose plastic was not so clear...).
The machine gun has its original barrel removed. It was wrong in shape and
anyway it would have been a risk to handle the model with guns into
position. I then drilled a hole on the cut and insert a new resin barrel
with a metal pin. Guns have a photoetched ring gunsight (by Waldron).
Once the putty has been sanded smooth, I sprayed a coat of
Humbrol 124 satin gray-green to see scratches and to have a good board
where to draw panel lines. I scribed all panel lines with a hasegawa/Tritool
metal scriber and made all rivets with a wheel bought at MicroMark (the
sell a set of 3 wheels with dfferent steps).
A note to all modelers wanting to build a detailed Mitchell, in any
scale.
I have the Squadron In Action and the Detail & Scale books, plus
many other books, booklets and magazines on this airplane.
NONE of them has correct representations of the panel lines!! I said NONE!
You MUST check pics of actual aircraft to understand where they are.
Expecially about the whole fuselage (because of the overlapping metal
sheets on the real aircraft).
I found big mistakes! I spent about 50 hours researching, drawing and
scribing panel lines and rivets (and still have doubts)! I can tell that
the Monogram 1/48th scale model is a source for correct panel lines
planning much better then books.
For example, it seems that almost nobody has ever drawn an additional
glass below the nose on earlier Mitchells, though it's pictured at page 43
in D&S N°60. It's also visible in wartime pics. Again the ventral opening
panel to allow panoramic photos aft of bomb bay is drawn on the wrong
fuselage half.
And again at page 77 it is written that "each of the elevators had movable
trim tabs that were controlled by actuators on both the upper and lower
surfaces", and there are 2 pics one from above and one from below proving
this....Hummmm, two actuators each tab simply cannot work! The view from
above is of a wartime machine, the view from below is an airplane in a
museum....Checking wartime pics, there are no actuators on the underside
of elevators! They reversed the elevators on the museum machine and thus
you think they are on the underside as well! They are only on the upper
surface. I can't understand how these mistakes may happen on a welknown
airplane of which so many survive all around the world.
These pics again show the model with wings, tails and
engines in place for photo purposes.
Next pages will at last show the completed model! Enjoy!
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