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1/32 Custom B-25 Mitchell "Briefing Time"

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 12:30 am
by Coreyeagle48
Greetings:

I completed this model a few years ago but realized I deleted the pictures from the previous thread way back. With all the custom planes being posted recently, I wanted to post this one again as I feel it is my best custom to date.

Background: This plane was built from an old Wen Mac Control Line B-25 I purchased on ebay. It was missing many of the parts. I knew it was 1/32 scale and wanted a 1/32 scale bomber. I used the Guillows kit to fill in the gaps and realize the Wen Mac bird is a little closer to 1/35, as the Guillows parts didn't fit quite correctly. The decals were done by taking photos of the markings and photo editing the background to have just the marking on a transparent image. Then they were printed on water decal paper using the Vita Cal decal paper. This process worked well.

This airplane replicates the B-25 Briefing Time that is flown by the Mid Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, PA. As the museum is only about 40 minutes from where I live, I consider this plane a hometowm bird and wanted to do this model because of that.

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This is what I started with from the Wen Mac kit.

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This was after the master painting was finished, I was checking the fit of the props at the time. The props came from 2 Revell 1/32 Corsair kits.

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All finished. The gray is a little lighter than the actual gray on the real plane. I chose a lighter gray because I felt it showed up a little better with the decals and it was what I had on hand.

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Another shot of the finished product, the original Wen Mac kit was a solid nose B-25. Briefing Time is a glass nose version so I retrofitted the nose from the Guillows balsa kit. There is a little scale difference and I never could get the nose to fit 100 percent correct, but it's close enough.

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Closeup of the nose art. There are four seperate decals here. Doing the photo editing for the bomb decals and crew names was extremely time consuming. Some of the decals took more time than the model. The crew members are pilots from the 32X P-47's, they fit well in the model.

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The tail section. The yellow numbers did not show up as a decal so they had to be painted in as did the white lettering. There is a tail gunner back there as well. As you can see by the screw, this was an old screw together kit.

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Closeup of the tailgun position.

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Closeup of the props and painted engine detail. The prop labels came from the Corsair kits.

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Closeup of the Bomb Group logo. You can see the pilot and copilot all set to go.

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Top view looking from behind.

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This is the actual airplane at the 2007 Geneseo Airshow

Enjoy!

Corey

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 8:05 am
by Panzer_M
Geneseo is awesome, I went years ago and got to see the CAF's He 111 before she burned..wish I had pics of my trip.

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:44 pm
by vmf214
Wen Mac or Aurora?

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:46 pm
by VMF115
Not bad...not bad at all 8) 8)

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:56 pm
by vmf214
Finally got to see all the pics with my slowpoke machine. The noseart came out nice!! 8)

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 11:54 pm
by Coreyeagle48
VMF214

When I purchased the plane it was listed as Wen Mac/Aurora. I don't know exactly which one it is.

It didn't come with any control line stufff but had wire landing gear for the nose.

I'd be interested to know which one it was as well.

Corey

Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2008 12:13 am
by vmf214
Yeah it's Aurora. If it doesn't already have the cutouts for the cyl heads in the cowls then it's not an original gas plane it's the later screwdriver kit version which is still quite rare and very pricey. I don't see any bell crank cutouts in the fuse so I'd say is definitely the later non flying kit version. You should be able to look inside the cowls and see a lightly molded stencil of the circular cutouts for the nitro engine head. A truly rare model there and you've done a nice job on it.

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 7:42 pm
by Buckyroo
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Here is the B-25 at the WWII Weekend last June. I didn't get a good shot of the nose art.

Kris

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 8:10 am
by Aviatornut.com
If we could only get one in 1/18 scale