Hawaiian Air Depot Camouflage Scheme Batch Build Part III

With the basic fuselage assembly complete work can begin on the wings.  Under the leading edge of each wing are air inlets for the intercooler and supercharger associated with each engine.  Academy has represented these as recessed panel lines.  Here is the underside of the C/D wing with the inlets in the process of being opened up.

All four inlets have been opened up and the openings trimmed with an Exacto knife.  Test fitting shows the gaping hole that is the wheel well which allows you to see inside the wing.  Not what you want for a potential contest model and something which bothers me in any case.

For comparison, here are the wheelwell interior components provided in the new Airfix B-17G kit.  I made resin castings of these for both Academy Fortresses with the exception of the two rear bulkhead pieces with the “cat ears” in the center of the picture.  These I cut from sheet stock.

This is a shot of the wing interior.  The intercooler and supercharger inlets are filled with PE from Eduard’s Fortress Exterior set, as is the perforated box structure at the rear of the wheelwell.  The forward firewall is a cast clone of the Airfix part, the rear wheelwell bulkhead is plastic sheet.  If you look closely you can see the forward part of the “U” shaped locating brackets for the main gear legs have been removed – test fitting showed it would be difficult to install the legs with all the interior parts in place.

The B-17C/D wing all closed up looking back into the wheelwell.  The see-through effect has been eliminated and there is now some basic structure in place.  The oil tanks will be installed after painting.

The B-17E wing has an oil cooler air inlet for each engine between the nacelles.  Academy’s wing works for the earlier Fortresses, but the inlets should be added for the B-17E and later.  The supercharger and intercooler inlets also have their PE “frames” in place in this shot.  The seam in the landing light recess was addressed by simply adding a small rectangle cut from an aluminum pie pan.

The Special Hobby B-18 wings were also assembled.  These had wheelwells which were enclosed so no major rebuilding effort was needed here.  The upper portion of each nacelle is molded as a separate part and is much too thick.  Filing them down until they fit flush will save most of the work to smooth them later.  On all three kits the trailing edges of the wings and tailplanes  were thinned.

Part IV here: https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/hawaiian-air-depot-camouflage-scheme-batch-build-part-iv/