--Originally Posted 4/20/09--

In the continuing quest to finish a model , last week I rolled out this build:

Already "finished" a couple years ago, this depiction of an Douglas Boston - export version of their A-20 - flown by the Royal Australian Air Force in 1943 against a large IJN troop convoy to Guadalcanal, in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea - was slated for improvement with (among other things) a greatly improved, nose greenhouse clear part, which Don Czech and I made, over in his workshop, in October, '07:


Click on Image to Enlarge Again, the problem was that the original greenhouse, which I cast in "clear" resin, proceeded to yellow markedly - a fault only accentuated by reflection of the yellow-green interior surfaces - and also that its depiction of the frame strapping was overly heavy. And while we're at it, I also want to (at least) upgrade the cheek gun blisters, which are overscale as well as pretty crudely finished - particularly when compared to surprisingly good-looking features of this Airfix mold, such as the twin-radial engines, one of whose cowl and prop I left removable; for display, as shown.

I started the refit right in on removing the resin nose:


Click on Image to Enlarge Inside, the bombardier is mounted on a platform, with large angled "box" alongside, all made out of solid lead; recast from melted fishing weights. Without which this model would be a heavy tail-sitter. Although the replacement part (top) was formed as an entire nose piece, I reattached a lower foundation, chopped from the original resin (bottom) - so much the better for preserving weight in the nose - to whose edges thin plastic rims (white) were attached; to mate with the replacement part, trimmed accordingly.

However two problems - with seemingly incompatible solutions - were thus created: 1) the loss of substantial resin caused the plane again to sit on its tail; and 2) the much clearer greenhouse was going to demand additions/corrections to the interior detail. While adding lead chunks could solve the first problem, their appearance would only exacerbate the second - while adding plastic details would never restore sufficient nose weight.

Enter GHQ MicroArmor®, to the rescue::


Click on Image to Enlarge Scaled at about 1:380, IIRC, GHQ's superbly detailed, white-metal GMC "deuce-and-a-half" truck (bottom-left) and Sherman tank (bottom-right) provided some relatively heavy little bits representing (completely made-up) inerior "padding" and "bomb sight" (top) whch both looked and weighted the nose better than anything else I could conjure up. And the oversized chunk of the Sherman turret - probably 4x wider than a scale Norden bomb sight - served also to cover an additional lead block (top-left), enabling the bird to nose-sit better now - even without the greenhouse yet - than ever before.

And I realized that cast-lead crew figures, bomb sites, nose decks and/or nose guns should have a big demand, among airplane modelers (in case anyone's interested...)

The above work took all afternoon the other day, such that I took the following pics with the interior paint still wet:


Click on Image to Enlarge There - that's more like it; more fitting for the level of detail of the rest of the build (even though the large, angled "box" is still pretty ridiculous looking).

Of course, the installed greenhouse will hide some imperfections - but not much:

Compare this to the initail appearance, above; see now why this build so desperately needs this improvement? These thermoplastic parts are just insanely clear; bear in mind, this view is through the dirty part - still with random dust, finger oils, etc - as dry-fitted. In fact, I'm now starting to worry the replacement will look so good that the cockpit canopy is going to end up looking too cheesey!

Stay tuned to see if that's the case, and for further progress on the way...

Cheers,

-Matty