Cockpit
Well you knew that we would get here eventually. An overview of what the kit offered can be summed up as adequate. It would be very easy to get very carried away in here as there is so much scope for this but in truth once the cockpit is assembled and the ‘canopy’ is on there really isn’t much that can be seen. Given that the kit is already retailing at more than £240 and with extras will top the £300 mark I believe that it will be best to consider very careful how much real value you will gain from going overboard in here. Eduard as ever has gone to town on this kit and it will be very easy to spend well in excess of £400+. No doubt Aires et al will also pitch in and before long the build costs could reach astronomic proportions. I have limited my input to the purely cosmetic and I will leave you to decide if it’s adequate.
I started on the side walls as I was checking out a build of this kit on FB and also my references and it seems that the cockpit walls were lightly padded on the B-17. The FB build used metal foil to represent the cladding I used a suitably scored piece of masking tape which has that fabric look built in. Colours inside the B-17 are it seems almost as controversial as WW2 Luftwaffe fighters! The sidewalls are in a golden brown so far as I can tell but I have seen photos of them in olive drab, pale creamy yellow, silver, forage green and interior green! I chose the green as I think it looks good against the green I had seen some good period photos in this colour and went that way as a result. The detail I picked out in black for panels and some graphite pencil for scratches and also some plumbing.
Spraying the metal components raised another question; USAAC Interior Green or what I had seen in a lot of photos (mainly refurbished display aircraft) a dark almost Foliage Green. I took a middle ground using Tamiya Dark Green as somewhere looking about right but no doubt some forum somewhere will be sharpening their knives for me soon! This sprayed thinly and weathered using pastels and pencil looks good to me.
The centre consoles are I think quite nice and look accurate. All the throttle quadrants and mixture controls look great painted up and with some light scratching look the part to me. The seat frames and rudder pedals look great too and these with some weathering look the part as little will be seen of them.
I also painted weathered and installed all 18 oxygen tanks around the cockpit area as well as the fire extinguishers and such like. All in all it’s very busy and under the canopy should look good. I haven’t fitted the seats just yet as I need to make the prominent yellow cushions, which the Kits World stencil decals provide markings for. I will make the cushions from Milliput and install them shortly together with the etched belts.