Jessica Cooper reviews Great Wall Hobby''s P-61B "Last Shoot Down" boxing of their 1/48 Black Widow kit.

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Thanks!

Wow, this one got all the "love" of the parcel service, ey?
I am glad it survived!
Thanks for the review!
Cheers,
Guido

The box is a little worse for wear, but everything inside is pristine so I'll have to say that the box did what it was designed to do: protect the contents.

Jessica, a very complete review.

I was some what surprised that my current build pictures came up when I tied to open the link to the picture of the access door via my Photobucket account. I have absolutely no objection to you linking to my account as is, if it works for you.

In my research those wing spoilerons as you noted were never in the open position while the aircraft was parked. It's a shame at GWH went to all that effort with the PE so one can show them in the open position, even though they're not by any means accurate. My current plans are to make them out of .040 sheet, then sanded so that they're level with the wing surface. As far as the flaps, most were left in the neutral position when the plane was parked, but there are references of the flaps in lowered position as well.

Since you're reviewing the B version, the kits comes with 4 drop tanks, two for each wing, which is correct for the B version. the A version didn't use them until version A-10, then then only one per wing on the outer wing. The 2nd boxing of the A version, which I'm building has the wing cut outs for the tanks that must be filled.

The props and spinner are a one piece molding. The spinner diameter is too wide, hence, the crankcase for the engines are also incorrect. I've ordered the True Details props and spinners, and will be making new crankcases out of plastic rod. The rest of the engines are simply magnificent.

Since I plan on cutting open some of the engine access panels, I need to have the cowl flaps in the open position, and will be attempting to fabricate those backside brackets, but not the linkages at this point.

While neither you nor I compare the kit to measured drawing, others do, and the kit is basically extremely accurate, which is a good thing.

The top machine gun turret on the A version is wrong in how it was molded. Not sure if the fixed unit on the B is or not. A swap with the old Monogram unit works well for the A if one has it. Not sure if a self fix is possible or not.

The main landing gear wheel wells lacks the kind of detail that the nose well has. Hence, the hours I've spent trying to add some.

Your assessment of the kit being a 95% is pretty accurate in my humble opinion.

Joel

Nice review Jessie - but the clear parts look like the ones from the second edition which were corrected (though not 100% correct because of this "double kink") - do you mean this by unchanged? I dunno if the Vector parts fit the Great Wall kits as they are designed for the Monogram kit, but from what I read the GW kit is very close in dimensions to the Monogram so it probably works without too much trouble. Has anyone tried it? I need to search a bit I think...
Rene

Yes, that's what I meant. Perhaps I should edit that bit to clarify it. The point is that out of the box the clear parts are not correct, but there's a replacement available which will look better.

That's why I posted a link rather than putting your picture in my review. Anyone following it gets to your page and can immediately see that I don't own the picture. It's a courtesy seldom observed on the interwebs these days.

Jessica, the original set of pictures were posted by Kosachev Sergeye. I was sent the link to them directly as I was up to that point in my build, and was stuck without some definitive information one way or the other, as all my reference pictures to that point had that area in the shadows, making it rather difficult to see those details. I then reposted those two pictures so that everyone interested could see for themselves.

Joel