The Little World

It all came good – as much due to the precision of the Airfix company as to my own skill. The Birthday Boeing is complete and ready to go into the museum.

I’ve indulged myself a little with the Nik Collection software in this final report- they do a plug-in for Photoshop that converts regular images to old Kodachromes…perfect for this WW 2 bomber.

The last day of a build is, as I have posted before, either going to be heaven or hell. This one was the former, rather than the latter. The subassembly parts were ready to go and it was just a case of propping the ship in various positions to let the parts that were glued on adhere before moving onto the next surface. It is a time for patience, but that is rewarded. I also do a mixture of adhesive types depending upon my faith in the engineering of the kit. PVA glue is used where I am not sure of the adherence of regular stuff.

The details are what make the thing – such as the uniquely British stops on the waist guns or that massive antenna sprouting mid-fuselage.

This is an electronics counter-measure bomber as well – that’s a radar dish revolving in the perspex chin bulge, feeding information to the bombardier and further back to decoders and jammers in the navigator’s compartment. The bomb load could very well be an afterthought if this plane was in a stream of other aircraft picking up information. Still, It’s nice to take something along as a present when you visit the Third Reich…

And the best part is the engines are fully functional. I turned them over to spread the oil into the cylinders and then cranked thm up with a starter cart. I got all four idling well before the neighbours came over and made me shut them down.

People can be so fussy these days… not like at home on 39th Ave. SW  in Calgary, Alberta in 1955 when someone I knew very well started and ran a war-surplus radial bomber engine in the basement of our house…Oh, I wish we had been a photo-taking family then.