Happy Thanksgiving

Ahhh…Thanksgiving. The best meal oriented holiday of the year. So far, today has been great. I slept in until 8:00am (I’ve been getting up at 4:20am this week so 8:00am is great), my awesome wife brought me my coffee, and topped it off by getting deeply involved with the B-26. I would definitley call it a massive success. 

The main triumph this morning was the fuselage halves being put together. The downfalls presented themselves quickly. The fuselage doesn’t have the greatest fit with a good size gap just abaft of the canopy. I’ve certainly had worse but it wasn’t an encouraging sight to see this early on. Now that the fuselage is together I can feel the true weight of the ballast. I over did it a bit. As it sits, I think if the stock landing gear struts were used, they would certainly fail under the weight. With that realized, I ordered a set of pewter landing gear from Sprue Brothers this morning. I also found a set of True Details resin wheels in one of my drawers to use. 

After the fuselage was positioned and secured with tape, I moved on to the wings and engine nacelles. The wings look great but the engine nacelles do not. To make it a little more challenging, they look even worse attached to the wings. This will be a sanding project for sure. I filled all of the gaps after the glue set up and thankfully it looks like it won’t be too big of a problem. The engine cowlings were the next hurdle to be discovered. Between the flashing and the dimples, I will be busy shaping these out. 

So I have lots of work to complete on the B-26 but I knew that coming into the build. It is, after all, a Revell kit. I’m determined to keep this kit at the forefront instead of leaving it while I attend to the easier kits. The B-26 will be my main focus until I can get to a more stable level. 

    
 The rest of the crew sits pretty decent with some degree of filler or primer on them. The Skyraider is leading the pack with only a little bit more sanding to go before I can get the wings attached. The Bronco is also doing quite well with the undercarriage getting attached and filled. Primer was sprayed this morning so I think I can get the wings on soon. The MiG-29 has a problem seam that I just can’t seem to get correct. After I conquer that, the wings and intakes will be my next focus. The Voodoo and Skywarrior are bringing up the rear with some long gaps to take care of. They’re big airplanes so it’s expected a little bit. All in all, even with the B-26’s issues, I’m encouraged with the status of all six builds. I really don’t think it will be long before they’ll all be moving on.