Has anyone read a review of this kit? I picked it up and want to get some feedback on it. Looks to be a real nice kit with special printed decals…not the usual Academy decals from hell.
Andy
This kit has has good interior detail, nice external scribing and the ability to make the plane with staggered or unstaggered waist guns. Standard tail gun position or later “Cheyenne” position.
Where the kit falls down, for me, is the wings. Most of the kits I’ve seen built, including the one on the side of the box, have excessive dihedral as built from the box. Next, the carburetor and intercooler intakes are represented by scribed areas instead of being open. The oil cooler intakes between the engines are absent altogether, probably because the wings are shared by all the different models of B-17’s, B’s through H’s, that Academy produced. B’s, C’s, and D’s did not have the oil coolers between the engines, whereas the E’s to the H’s did. Nothing you can’t fix, just another step.
Finally, the wiring harness and push rods on the engines are way over scale. I’m going to use the engines from some old Hasegawa B-17 donors that I have lying around.
HTH
Tony H.
for what it’s worth, buy a set of Quickboost engines. I bought a set for a B24 I was pieceing together, and have since bought a half dozen other sets. The ones for the Hasegawa planes actually fit the Academy better than the Hasegawa. Also the Quickboost machine guns are very nice.
gary