Martin B-51 Master - SORTED!

[PR19_Kit]

The customers doing the development work. 

Sounds like BL's philosophy in the 60s-70s.

[jcf]

Yeah, how inconsiderate of a very small company in a wartorn country.


ICM and MiniArt are huge in comparison to MikroMir, MiniArt even has a separate
crafting product division located in Poland.

[The Rat]

The customers doing the development work. 

Sounds like BL's philosophy in the 60s-70s.

Before buying something like that I usually look on-line for build reports, and if there's someone with a YouTube video, even better. It stopped me from buying a kit years ago, can't remember what.  I should have done that before starting on the Pegasus Spiteful, woe is me.

[PR19_Kit]

I've finally got some decals on the Master, my home printed serials were pretty simple and went on nicely. The bought-in Fantasy Print Shop RAF roundels did the same as the ones I used on my Scimitar FB2. As soon as they dried they started to curl up at the edges, so required varnishing very quickly indeed. Obviously there's not enough adhesive on the rear of decal, you need much better Quality Control Mr. Fantasy. I shan't be buying your stuff again if it goes on like this.

Lastly I slid my home printed 16 Sqdn. black/yellow fuselage roundel band onto the rear fuselage, and that was a REAL PITA! 

Getting them to lie down properly was pretty difficult, and needed lots of pushing and shoving, and I'm glad I printed extra lengths of the black/yellow strip as I had to patch two small areas later on.

It's getting there, but slowly.



And I know I haven't added the balancer wheels yet, they look VERY fiddly indeed!

[Rick Lowe]

Coming along well. 

Looks like my Sister's cat in front of the fire... upside-down...

[PR19_Kit]

I've at last finished construction of the Master B1, just a bit of detail painting to do and that'll be that.

But the last stages have been absolute HELL! 

Those blasted balancer wheels under the wing tips are totally impossible to attach while having any hope of them surviving the first trip to a show. And as for them both being on the ground at once, forget it! The problem is the wing anhedral, and as Mikro Mir don't give you ANY indication of what angle that should be, and the wing tabs give you a large degree of freedom, you can only guess. The balancer wheel struts are very thin, and not very strong as a result and there's no room for adjustment at all. The legs would need to be twice as long and to be cut to length to make them both touch on my model, so it sits port wing down, but do I care? NO!

The bracing strut for the balancer wheel is just that, a strut, no indication of where it should fit, and it's butt jointed to the wheel strut and the wing. The wingtip gear doors are PE parts that are designed to be butt jointed to the assembly, and you can imagine how well that works! All in all I've had a very frustrating evening trying to put this to bed, but it's done.

Hopefully I'll have all the detail bits painted tomorrow and can post the final pics then.

A good attempt Mikro-Mir, but I can't help thinking that a little more time spent on development may have paid dividends, the blasted Russians notwithstanding.

[scooter]

A good attempt Mikro-Mir, but I can't help thinking that a little more time spent on development may have paid dividends, the blasted Russians notwithstanding.

Maybe Mikro-Mir can give Antonov their plans so they can blast back at the Russians

[Rick Lowe]

Just my opinion, but in that instance I'd have attached the doors to the wheel struts for a more solid assembly and more gluing surfaces...

Next time, you could base the strut around a pin, then drill through the wing to pass it right through (cutting it to length beforehand).
A bit of faff to get everything attached to it, but it would be a solid basis for the assembly and not so prone to breaking off. And I'd still attach the door to the strut.
That way, you'd have a bit of wriggle room as to length, too.

Also a potential hole in the upper wing to fill... swings and roundabouts. FWIW.

[NARSES2]

A good attempt Mikro-Mir, but I can't help thinking that a little more time spent on development may have paid dividends, the blasted Russians notwithstanding.

I get the impression with a fair few "limited run kits" especially where they are of projects where perhaps there is a limited amount of readily available information available, that the producers tend to work on the basis of : "well we know there was a part like this, and here it is, but as to where it goes and how it fits ? Use your imagination" . And I'm only partly joking.

[zenrat]

With landing gear layouts like this I attach the front set and the outriggers and then adjust the rear set to fit.
If possible by modifying it so a rod slides into a hole in the UC bay.

[PR19_Kit]

I wish! The aft landing gear of the B-51 won't fit properly even as it comes out of the box as it has no vertical leg to take any loads as designed. I added an extra length of strut so it would do, which rather fixes the length of that rear leg.

Both gear bays are the full height of the fuselage, so any hole would be out of the top!

Just now I'm fiddling about trying to do all the detail stuff, and finding the bits I've forgotten, like the nav lights and the wing incidence decals................ 

[PR19_Kit]

And it's done at last!

Here's the Master B1 in all its grey and green camo'd glory, balancing on its tip toes and its port wing wheel........



And from the other side..........



And from the top.....



And undeath as well!



A few detail shots as well, from the starboard side of the nose, showing the sharksmouth and the longer canopy of the RAF's B-51s.



And from the port side showing the 'scabbed on' IFR probe, and the 4 x ADEN Cannon gun pack.



The tail, showing 16 Sqdn's black & yellow band and their 'Saint' fin badge, and the ECM aerials on top of the fin. (and also my streaky painting......... )



The somewhat bizarre wing tip balancing wheel.



And lastly, what it was all about, the Read Beard tactical nuke in the very clever rotating bomb bay.



I'm still working on the backstory for why the RAF would have chosen the B-51 for this task when it already had a perfectly capable tactical nuke bomber in the shape of the Canberra B(I)8, but that's whiffing for you.

[philp]

It looks good Kit.

[CammNut]

Well done on finishing a challenging model. I love the dual-seat canopy

[frank2056]

Looks good! Especially since the kit refused to go together without a struggle.

Maybe the RAF had better/more reliable engines than the J-47s and saw a quick way of adding to their nuclear bomber force?