Just finished this one last night. It was the edition with the resin. My kit decals were junk so I got a copy of Zots B-26 Maruaders of the 584th BS, 394th BG. I did Victory Read. I think I will try to add a little more weathering for a more “used” look and a pic I saw last night of the actual plane shows it with invasion stripes so I may try to add them eventually.
Thanks for looking, Chris
Love it…great job…I love this plane…what is your take on the overall build?
Well done Chris.
[dto:] I like the nose art too
Wow, that really turned out nice, well done! The OD Marauders are the best looking of them all. [Y]
Nice build of the oldie but goodie. Well done.
Regards, Rick
Great work! To answer the question about the difficulty of this build (while waiting for the actual builder to do so), let’s just say this is one of the most shape-accurate kits ever released of a WWII 1/48th subject, even to this day, while being also one of the toughest to build neatly… (Only the fin shape is very slightly off, while the cowlings are just a tad to small in the opening: Again very little…)
I think the B-26 has inherently a very complex canopy framing, on very slippery rounded shapes all-round, all of it resulting in a very leakage-prone masking on razor-thin window frames… The kit compounds these problems with a very difficult fit in many areas, and not just the clear parts either… The wing leading edge lights are a major feature of this type, and an even more major nightmare on this kit… This is severely compounded by the wing leading edges being warped on my 3 kit samples, creating a “hollow” on the wing underside which must be filled in on a huge underwing area, while trying desperately to blend in those diabolical leading edges light clear covers (this level of wing warping may not be relevant for every kit mind you)… Straight wing leading edges thus required losing all raised details on both wing underside surfaces for me, and in addition the super-severe difficulty in the adjustment of the wing leading edge clear parts…
The cowlings are not that great, and aligning everything is tricky all around; as usual with all big kits, the wing spars tend to want to make the wings sit all crooked, and have to be much carved-into for a reasonably symmetrical appearance…
The tailgunner position’s glass is another huge fit issue, and even worse are the fortunately less-visible belly windows…
Not a week-end kit, and I usually hardly care about fit issues… This one really made me eat my words about not caring about fit and precision in moulding, while preferring accuracy above these lowly concerns. Yes, it IS accurate, but…
Gaston
Looks really good…
You said you have three kits… Are they all the same release? I didn’t have any warpage on mine, one being the original 1978 “Flak Bait” release, and the other was the 1990s re-release of “Yankee Guerilla”. There was also the limited Revell re-re-release of “Flak Bait” in 2002, but I haven’t seen that one anywhere…
I’ve got two “near the bench” WIPs of it right now, but haven’t got near the fit-issues you describe, and no wing-warping at all… I had to sand a bit off the outside third of the spar on “Flak Bait”, but that was about it… Of course, that meant having to shim the roots, but that’s kinda “normal” for those big ol’ Monogram birds (B-17 excepted)… Since I haven’t got the wings intalled on the 1990s release yet, I’m not 100% sure, but test-fitting seems ok, once I sanded the wing-root/fuselage joints on both the fuselage and wings flat (didn’t do that on the first one)… I’ve only just started on the modified tail on the first one, got a lot of sanding left to do there, so I skipped that mod on the second one, lol…
Again, nice work, and count me in with the “OD Marauder looks better” crowd…
Thanks for the comments guys. More pics added. I spent about a month building this one but mainly because I wasn’t at it more than an hour or two per session. Plus my work area is in the garage and the heater doesn’t do much when we get down in the 20’s.
Overall not a real complicated build. Luckily I didn’t have any warping as described above. The main areas that were hard for me (and if you look closely it shows) were the cowlings and the clear parts on the tail. I will have to go back to clean the tail up some to blend it in a bit better. The resin cockpit floor and nose wheel well took a lot of material removal to make them work together but it did work. I used the resin barrels on the top turret and used plastic barrels from the spares box for the belly guns. I heated and flattened the tires just a little and the Zots decals are awesome. As edited in the first post, I do want to go back and add a little more weathering and based on photo’s a found on the web, I need to add invasion stripes.
Love the nose art…I want to do some similar nose art on a P-47, but I am sure I will get comments from the wife…but I’ll do it anyway!!!