IT'S BEEN A WHILE
There's no doubt that I fell into a creative hole after joining the fuselage together. This is an update on events since.
I tried installing the beautifully cut pilots' canopy piece sent by my North Carolina friend myself, but failed. The part broke, and attempts to fix it, etc. etc. etc.
Finally, after putting the fuselage on the table and letting it sit for a couple weeks, I called my North Carolina friend and said that the only way I was going to get this done was with his help.
I traveled down there this past weekend. We started over with the canopy glass from, believe it or not, in the one prior B-17 F kit I built in the early eighties, now long since reduced to spare parts bin stuff. (A family cat knocking it off the table was responsible for that).
So, here is a new roof with the canopy glass installed. This new roof is also from the eighties build.
You will note that the side glass has been cut out again in this old part. For those wondering how he did it, an electrical drill very carefully employed is the secret.
Here are a couple of views of the canopy roof installed.
Here you can also see the polished out nose piece with bracket for the nose that he fabricated.
Obviously, I have more primer to spray after masking all this, and we won't know how good it really looks until that is applied. Part of the fun of wondering if you got things right on a years-long project!
I close with the horizontal horizontal stabilizers glued on and with control surfaces taped to them.
And here is a shot of the overall fuselage from front to back with nose Plexiglas taped.
It does have that look of an F model, doesn't it?
I still can't believe the amount of work I have put into this project, not to mention the years. It goes without saying that I couldn't have done this at all without the help of my North Carolina friend because of how "at the limits of technology" so many of these tasks are for me.
As to how many other kits I could have built during this time? Who knows? I don't think about such things anymore. The way I look at it, once I get this done I can go back to my hobby of building model airplanes!
The next few weeks will be spent re-scribing panel lines that are still missing and then moving on to either the ball turret (shudder) or more likely than not the engines by Eduard, which will be 4 nice little kits in and of themselves.
As they say, "I'll keep you posted."
