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Academy B-1B Lancer 1/144

For this year's build,

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Looks to be a straight forward build. Kit is a new tool released in 2019 and has nine sprues, five dark grey, two black, one white and one clear (masks are included for the cockpit). It has a simple flight deck but there isn't much glass to see into the interior. The gear can be built lowered or raised, bombay open or closed, with an extra fuel tank and two types of bombs to fill it. A Sniper XR pod and pylon is also included. The wing are positionable, and there are two types of wing fairings provided, one that allows the wing to moved but leaves a gap in the fairing when they are swept forward and another that keeps the wing in the forward swept position. Markings are provided for one aircraft from 34 BS Ellesworth AFB and two from 9 BS Dyess AFB with a variety of colour schemes, as long as its overall Gunship Grey.

The four white cans are 3D printed from Shapeways. They are a bit deeper and have more exterior detail than the kit nozzles.

Time to man the model bench and let the fun begin.
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Cheers,
Rich
 
Click to expand...
Update with one week in. The tail section is mainly a one piece molding. Only the ECM blisters, one side of the stabilator blister and the stabilators need to be added. I trimmed the tabs on the stabs to position them in the slight droop they have when parked.

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Couldn't resist ading some detail to the cockpit. Added were seat belts, the centre notch on the seat, side consoles and control sticks. I filled in the area behind each seat and cut thru the bulkhead and blanked it off to add some depth to the tunnel running back to the offensive and defensive systems officers sations. The instrument panel and centre console have decals applied from the kit. The consoles have some little dots of paint added.

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With that done, the cockpit and wings are sandwiched between the upper and lower fuselage halves. Erring on the side of caution, I added some small weights around the nose landing gear well. There is the option to allow the wings moveable thru forward to full aft sweep. The wing glove for this option leaves a large gap when the wing is swept forward.

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The other option locks the wings in the forward position. This is the normal position when parked. In order for the wings to be swept on the ground, a set of dollies must be used to take the flex out of the wings otherwise they will contact the engine pods.

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Paint work was done on the wheel wells and weapons bays. The large openings in the weapons bays allow the sidewall and doors to lock in place. The nose wheel well side wall and doors have a similar method of installation.

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Back to the bench.

Cheers,
Rich
 
Spent the last week prepping the weapons bays and stores, building painting the landing gear and wheel wells and getting the overall gunship grey on. Installing these details is best you if follow the recommended order, some parts won't go on if you don't. The weapons bay sides and doors are one piece with tabs that fit into the large openings you see in the photos above and click into place. I don't think they will come out without potentially damaging them, I didn't try. For weapons you get one fuel tank and two racks each of 6 x GBU-31 & 18 x GBU-38. From poking around the web, I found crews would typically load the fuel tank in the forward bay when it was required, GBU-38's in the centre bay and GBU-31's in the aft bay. They tried to avoid loading GBU-38's in the aft bay due to severe pitch down of the bombs as they left the bay. Next is applying tiny decals.

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Chers,
Rich
 
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