motivated by Kurt's recent build, I pulled this old Italeri kit out of the stash. Not a lot of parts, and the cockpit is really sparse, which will all that glass up front, really is the focal point of this aircraft. So - decided to take the existing cockpit structure, cut it up a bunch, throw a lot more styrene of various forms and sizes in there, steal a few parts from the spares box, and see what I could do with it. I've been working on this since last weekend, and finally glued the fuselage together today. Series of pics below show raw parts (the seats were included, but I didn't show them in the raw pics), then all the stuff I added without paint, then the final result (though I think I took the pics before I finished weathering, so it looks a bit more rustic now).
I did cut the control column down shorter before I closed this up, and put more paint on those pipes on the port side. I was originally thinking I'd use some Mike Grant decals, but when I covered this in the canopy pieces, I could see that using decals would be a waste, as you wouldn't be able to see much.
I'm going to need to add some shell ejector chutes to the nose gun and two top guns - trying to decide how to do that. Am also going to sand off the raised panel lines and re-scribe.
The kit comes with both Jumo and BMW engines, and I secured a nice set of decals for a variety of BMW-engined night bombers. I also had to order a metal paint mask (the one Kurt used for his He-177). This night scheme will put my newly acquired AB skills to the ultimate test...(fingers crossed!)
That looks good even in braille scale.
The creative gizmology is strong with this one.
Creative gizmology...meaning I'm making stuff up that doesn't look much like an original anything? Yep - sounds about right!
No. More like making things look good with whatever is at hand.
As I was scribing panel lines, I realized that the recessed radar in the top of the fuselage was missing. I scratch built one from a spare engine piece and some styrene sheet, reamed a hole and recessed it into the upper fuselage. It is a bit larger than it's supposed to be, but at least it's now there!
Added the shell ejector chutes to the 3 guns in the upper part of the cockpit, including the gun stand for the top turret gun. I also added the shell collector beneath the gun stand using some blue tac - super glued on. I've got the canopies masked (thank goodness for Eduard masks!) and the crew almost ready to insert, so I can close it up and paint. It'll be a multi-step process to get the canopies painted right, because I'll have to shoot paint on the upper section before attaching to get the section beneath the turret painted before I then attach the gun stand and turret, which sandwich together with the main part of the canopy between them. Then I can add all the canopy sections, cover the part I've already painted, and proceed.
The nose-gun chute has been placed so that it will appear attached to the gun when I attach the nose piece of the canopy, to which that gun is attached.
I was going to depict the wire rings around the shell chutes with pencil, but the particular color of Vallejo paint I used came out gloss, and when I tried to write with the pencil it ripped into the paint. So I used a small glue applicator brush to apply dark brown pastel chalk power. It's not as fine in detail, but once under the canopy it looks pretty good.
Your progress is coming along nicely. Good cockpit interpretation.