Quoted Text
On the real aircraft, the outboard engine's propeller is behind that of the inboard; on your photo it's in front, which, to anyone who knows photography, means that the photo has not been taken at exactly 90 degrees to the centre-line of the aircraft, but at a backwards angle. This will throw the perspective out completely, so that the front fuselage appears to taper more than it really does; this effect will be exacerbated if the lens used was a wide-angle, which, judging by the apparent relative size of the engine to the fuselage, was certainly the case.
Marks 4/10 could do better.
Edgar
Couldn't you have checked other pictures before saying this?
You mean Boeing's GA drawings don't even show they tapered the fuselage ahead of the bulkhead?
To be fair, the taper seems not quite as radical below as it is on top, which seems to suggest they intended to accomodate the canopy in some way, and they actually modified the fuselage out of round in that area to minimize its radiuses I suppose...
While the first picture was not the best, I don't see how you could construe the added taper as a perspective effect...
Anyway, since you wanted the engines ligned up correctly here you are: Even the prop blades are nearly aligned... It has the effect of making the top outline taper even more obvious:
If it really is true that Boeing General Arrangement drawings do not show this, then it should serve as a warning as to the wisdom of using GA drawings as reference...
For those interested, I added in white the way the Monogram kit's outline is contructed, except for the one white line following the top of the real aircraft's top taper: There the Monogram kit follows the paralell red line above it instead : It's the "step" ahead that shows the kit's discrepancy on top, at the rear top of the main canopy, which is something like 6 inches +...
You can also see that the point of the taper's "start" corresponds roughly with the front pressurized compartment's rear bulkhead's panel line, both top and bottom.
Even if we accept that there is no plan view taper in the rear of this area (still unclear to me), just angling down the kit's front spine is not enough (the "drop" is about twice beyond the thickness of the kit's plastic to carve and sand btw...): The kit's nose cap is sized proportionately to the oversized front fuselage anyway, as is the main glasshouse, so entirely scratchbuilding the entire canopy is inevitable...
I'm doubting I will ever get around to do it someday... Just downsizing the nose cap is a huge endeavour because it is a compound curve on a circular object: It would really have to be spun on a machine to get constant radiuses all around...
The main canopy glasshouse, both kit and unfortunately even the Squadron canopy, share the same too large diameter and, just as important, an insufficient profile curve...
Yet, since manufacturer rely so heavily on drawings (or old kits!) these days, it's a real possibility a new release would also get this wrong in the same way or even worse, just like what happened to the GW P-61...
I'll try to find out more about it, but it really looks like I'll have to stick with the more reasonable B-24 canopy correction that has just decided it wants to work now, after about 6 kits...
Gaston
