I love Great Wall Hodby but I think someone over there goofed. In the new release of the L4810 P-61B "Last Shoot Down 1945" They included the P-61A Radome instead of the longer P-61B nose which was shipped with the initial release of the P-61A by mistake as well. Also there are no pylons or long range fuel tanks included in the kit. In fact the instructions don't show them. There are a few other items that seem to be missing as well. Like the aerodynamic antennae and some air scoops.

If you look at the sprues labeled (I) you can see some parts were never molded to be included with the kit.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought you were supposed to be able to build a dedicated P-61B with this kit?

By the way I'm not here to bash Great Wall, just need to figure things out before I contact them.

These kits are so far off in so many ways in the crew pod area, I can hardly see the point of building them...

For sure, in a few years, someone will see the market to make something that actually resembles the real P-61 crew pod... Zoukei-Mura for instance...

Look at the Airfix Spitfire fuselages of two years back (up to the Mk XVII): Airfix is just coming out with real Spitfires now, and those Spitfire kits of two years ago now look completely strange next to the newer models: This will be even more true of the current P-61...

Just to give you an example, the 1/48th GWH radome nose is probably more like in the high 1/30s scale in depth from top to bottom (I got the canopy dimensions from MAAM to compare it to)... What difference does it make if it is the long or short nose? It is just completely nuts all-around... Of all current kits, only the AZ Ki-48 is comparable in awfulness...

Gaston

Yet the kit still looks like a P-61 and nothing else to my eyes.

Gaston, get on with enjoying building something instead of your usual method of rubbishing a kit simply because it has panel lines 1mm out.

The problems with this kit and it previous iterations are well known and MOST people can live with the small errors present.

As I've said before and a few others have said, we build scale representations of the real thing, not millimetre perfect reproductions.

It is a hobby which we should all enjoy, not one in which we should rubbish the efforts of companies to come out with modern kits of subjects that are woefully under represented in plastic.

I'd rather someone does this in 1/72nd scale as the Dragon kit is terrible.

As far as I can see Great Wall's biggest omission was not to supply the kit covered with straight red lines, in anticipation of the attendant criticism; perhaps they'll correct that in future issues.
Incidentally, there isn't, wasn't (and never has been) a Spitfire XVII.

Well somebody should release a kit of the XVII, then we should finally be able to build a kit with no perceivable fatal flaws !

Cheers, D

Hi John

Getting back to your original point, my "Last Shootdown" does have the longer radome but, as you say, no drop tanks.

Now, I hasten to add, my copy of the kit is a pre-release one (I'm just getting set to build it for the Nightfighters Campaign) - so I guess there's a chance the full production boxing is different (my early sample of the P-61A also had the correct nose, but then the parts got switched somehow).

All the best

Rowan

Ok, Seafire F XVII...

To illustrate what I meant, below is a comparison of my corrected radome (to exact profile shape, if a little rough), with the similar part from Great Wall (this is from the dimensions I got from the MAAM museum restauration, btw):



Because of the extra depth, the long GW nose part looks pretty much like a "short" nose part, making the distinction moot: It actually looks more accurate -in proportion- as a short-nose radome than a long one... So you are better off passing off the long nose as a short nose, for what it's worth... If you are not interested in years of major carving/sculpting surgery that is:



The GW kit is almost entirely dimensionally copied from the Monogram kit (all major parts interchange), except for a few added errors, despite the availability in China of a P-61 in an open museum at the time of the kit's design, which is what maddens me the most about this...

The result is that the wings and booms are good, and that's about it...

The main feature missing from this kit is research: A prominent error added by GW -in my view- is the lack of concave hollow at the base of the fins: I grafted the entire Monogram fin/tailplane to the GW booms (at the rear panel line just ahead of the fin) to try to help this...

In the face of all this, missing drop tanks don't sound like too big a deal...

Gaston

Hi Rowan,

Thanks for your reply. I was able to look inside the box of GWH P-61B Last Shoot Down kit at my local hobby shop. It had the shorter nose for the P-61A without the little extension behind it. The instruction sheet also showed the shorter nose in the drawings. The shorter nose part number is K-1. Does the longer nose that you have have a different part number on the sprue?

I know that GWH got flamed on another message board because the initial release had the B nose in it and some other mistakes. You know the history about how GWH made it right. But they did include two pylons and tanks in the first kit, but not in the B kit which should have four tanks. I can live with that. However I want to see if the kit I looked at was a one off mistake that included the wrong nose. Before I pay $70 for the kit I want to make sure I can get the correct nose. I can scrounge tanks, pylons, and aerodynamic antennae from the Monogram kit. Also it would be nice to let the folks at GWH know about this in a friendly way.

Regards,
John

Hi John

That could be the root of the muddle - both sprues are labelled "K":



As you say, the short nose is "K1", whereas the long one is unnumbered on its sprue - but the instructions call for "K1" again. (And, just to add an extra twist to the story, the short nose in the pre-release sample of the first boxing came already detached from its sprue.)

In the course of checking this, I've also just noticed that, while the drop tanks and pylons have been left out of both kits L4806 and L4810, the slots for them are still there on the wings.

All the best

Rowan