I'll just sum up briefly the main outline troubles of the new Great Wall kit, before getting on with the worst part, its main canopy, and how it compares with the actual dimensions I got from the MAAM restauration:
-Props, cowls, engines, underside boom details, all with AM resin to fix them, with special mention for the quality of the Vector parts.
-Base of fin leading edges not concave enough: It is a much more difficult issue than it seems to get the radiuses really more hollow, while being smooth and symmetrical, and this issue is about 60-70% improved on the Monogram vs the GW straight from the box... Since GW parts are mostly dimensionally copied from all the Monogram main components, I plan on grafting the Monogram fins on GW booms at the panel line in front of the base of the fins, which in theory should save a lot of trouble...
-Great Wall rear-facing canopy is totally incorrect in framing, with many fictional framing/opening features: Monogram on the left is nearly perfect and will fit the GW kit with little trouble:
-Excess forward fuselage depth, this carrying over to the radar nose cone (Monogram identical): This is very noticeable from photos in relation to the canopy depth:
I'll skip over the airbrake/spoileron depiction, since showing them closed alleviates the issue(?), and it is not an overall outline issue. The wrong details of the boom undersurface near the engines is correted by the Vetor engine set, as is the charateristic fairing around the engine's crankcase.
-Poor radius transition depiction on upper front fuselage, drawing and photo from Serguey (Vector).
This makes the transition to the kit's biggest issue: The very poor depition of the kit's canopy in both available 1/48th kits.
I opbtained several measurements of the elements of the main canopy diretly from the MAAM P-61 restauration staff, helping things along with a donation which got me a certificate and a piece of P-61!
In blue and red are the actual MAAM dimensions, in green is an extrapolated dimension. Note that the tallness of the grey master pictured here is exaggerated slightly by the need to allow for trimming on the smash moulded part. It is also slightly narrower to allow for a flush fit side-to-side (very important to avoid a "rounded" look near the join), taking into account the thickness of the clear plastic to be wrapped over it.
On the next photo, this fuselage depth difference has since been increased, to make shallower still the area just ahead of the windshield, as the two kits are here lined up at the top of the nose.
(Note that the vertical black plastic card inserts added must substract what the X-acto saw cut removes, so they add less length than what appears here...)
It is extremely difficult to lengthen those flat side while keeping them straight and square...
What fit looks like with a stock GW canopy when the fuselage matches MAAM dimensions! (A 0.7 mm gap is not visible here at the rear end):
The Monogram dimensions:
Windshield dimensions are MAAM: Note the difference in overall length of the canopies:
Improved master from above...:
Extreme differences in the canopy cross-section...:
Beause of the two-cabin "step", this canopy is very difficult to smash mould, so that moulding method requires two parts:
This type of mostly frameless canopy is very difficult to mask and paint, because too much thickness of paint will make the paint break "across" the frames when the mask is removed (no "shoulder" or scribing to help "crack" the paint in the "right" place), but not enough paint will allow the light to shine through... Likely some decal film will here come to the rescue in some places, if not most straight lines...
This was a bit of poor fitting at the front, where some "roundness" from moulding was left in the clear part, and the flat fuselage area ahead of the windscreen appeared too tall as well. After some trimming, a mysterious assymmetry developped in that area which required a slight layer of putty... Oh well: The fit is better now after all the trimming, and the canopy depth is closer as well...:
Keeping everything straight on the forward fuselage, made of just thin and flat side pieces without a cockpit floor to stiffen things, is particularly nightmarish, but far more so on the "loose" and assymmetrical Monogram kit...:
I think with a whole new resin front fuselage, and a new nose cone, the kit would be quite buildable, as GW fit and quality is excellent elsewhere, and the severest problems are mostly in the front fuselage. Most of the other problems have either AM resin pieces or the Monogram kit to help.
These P-61s kits have arguably among the more ghastly canopy outlines in "mainstream" 1/48th, only the AZ Ki-48 and the terrifying Monogram B-24 seem obviously worse offhand... Unquestionably the GW is better in that area than the Monogram, despite its mismatching windshields...
It is interesting to note just how modestly off the GW P-61 canopy is in its raw dimensions: The Eduard and Tamiya FW-190A/Ds have windshields (and thus canopy tops), that are 20% too wide (6.1 mm vs 5.1 actual): GW's P-61 canopy is a marvel of accuracy in raw numbers compared to that, yet looks worse...
Gaston
