Academy B-17F Flying Fortress Build - Cockpit

My last post about model aircraft was about the T3 Jr set I nearly finished. The decals on them were appalling, so I sort of left them half finished.

Since then I've mostly completed an Academy 72nd scale Corsair (I'll do a separate post on that once it's finished) and bought the Academy 72nd scale B-17F Flying Fortress. It's a big kit.

I bought an Eduard "Zoom" kit for the cockpit. It comes with photo-etched seatbelts, panels, and other details. It is excruciatingly detailed.

The nose holds a place for the navigator to sit, as well as the bomber's seat. I recreated a wood grain on the table by laying down a base of Desert Yellow. I used an old drybrush to drag some Red Brown across it, then passed over once more with the Desert Yellow. It came out really well - I'll be using this technique for the Sopwith Camel I have sitting in my pile of kits.

Here you can really see the detail Eduard puts into their photo-etched kits. It was very hard to put the seatbelts on, especially without the right kind of glue. Still; the detail is enough to distract the casual eye from the poorly laid down seatbelts.

I love this instrument panel. It was just a couple of sheets you stick on, and it just makes this amazing difference. The steering wheels are photo-etched too. Much more delicate than the clunky moulded parts the original kit came with.

And here's the bomber's seat! The bomb-sight doesn't look anything like the real part, and I wasn't sure which way round it should go, even from the instructions. Ah well.

As fiddly as it was to attach these parts, the frustration paid off in the end. I'll be getting hold of a vacuum-formed set of canopies and windows, so you'll be able to actually see into the craft once it's finished.