A-20G, New Guinea

This will be a fairly low-effort build (closed bomb bay & canopy), but I did have Eduard's original style PE interior set for this, so I used it. 

Kept the kit seat since Eduard's was not really that much of an improvement but did use their belts, which I am 90% sure are placed wrong. Oh well.
 

Also kept some of the kit parts here too, supplemented with Eduard's bits. I forget what a pain these older style Eduard sets are. Fiddly doesn't even begin to describe it. The carpet monster ate Eduard's PE compass, so the pilot is going to have to rely on dead reckoning. 

Other than some minor scratchbuilding and improvement of kits parts, low-effort like I said. One area that will need attention are the carb air intakes, way too thick as molded so a-trimming we go. 

Putting in a little effort on the turret since it's highly visible, from the top at least. 

More detail that will never be seen but as the saying goes "at least I know it's there." 

Kit .50cal barrels were pretty anemic, so replaced with brass rod. Haven't figured out a way to make the cooling holes in the barrel jacket and I didn't want to spend more $ on Master barrels, so I let it slide (hey, I said it was going to be low effort) 😉 

Remember, every fifth round is a tracer...supposedly. 

Kit guns mocked into place. Still looking for some good pics of the sighting mechanism. I think the kit has it as that thing painted brown, which I thought might have been a crash pad, but hard to say. Will scratch something better if I find some better reference pics. 

Fuselage closed up and nose grafted on. This kit was picked up from a fellow scalemate and they had some parts from other boxings. He had already assembled the nose well, so why not use it. Plenty of weight hidden in there to keep it from being a tail sitter. The wing spar had unfortunately snapped during shipping, hence the braces. 

I've never actually built an AMT aircraft kit and the fit isn't terrible. It's not Tamiya by any means, but just a little minor seam work and so far the glass has fit quite well. 

Not to say it's trouble free...the closed bomb bay doors had large gaps front and rear and were flush on the sides, so a little plastic card front and back and some careful scribing on the sides made things a little more uniform. 

Like I said, it's no Tamiya, but the fit is certainly better than Monogram's B-26 and A-26 that used the same approach to attaching the stabilizers. Clamping during gluing will close up most of these gaps. 

 

 

 

Doodle coat in progress. 

I see broccoli, green peas from a can, lima beans and definitely some spinach...I'm running out of green shades, might have to mix some more!