I started building this kit around 1999, so yeah it is a long term project. And since it is the 100th year anniversary of the Royal Air Force, I feel it is time to finish it. I did build this kit once before when I was a freshman in high school. Being motivated and stoked that I could afford to buy it by saving my allowance at the time I believe it was $50.00 at the time. This kit I picked up at a Wings N Wheels Hobby Shop in Mystic, Ct back in 1992, and yep paid $50.00 for it. And since then I did picked up another one about 10 years ago off of Ebay and yes again for 50.00 with the shipping. When they were up to 100.00 at the time. It was a good pick up. Since the current kit has been started, I will however crack the 2nd kit and see what is in the box. This is the original boxing in black plastic. I believe the current run is in grey plastic. When I first opened the first kit Tamiya packs the fuselage off to the side of the bagged parts. Wrapped with a rubber band on each end of the fuselage to keep the halves together within the box. Well if it has been in the box a number of years, the rubber deteriorates and will melt into the fuselage, like the Tigercat tires did in the AMT kit. But the damage is not permanent though it will need some work to cleanup the ring mark left in the front and rear extreme ends of the fuselage. In the 2nd kit, the rubber bands were removed by the previous owner. So no issues with that in the 2nd kit. The kit which is one of Tamiya's early run of 48th scale series, has fine raised panel lines. The instruction sheet is in Japanese but easy to follow. Great detail and in direct competition with Monograms 48th scale multi-engine bombers at the time, though the Tamiya kit was much more expensive.. Otherwise no one else produced any and still haven't in this scale. Only Tamiya with the 2 Lancaster variants and Revell/Monograms B-17,B-24 and B-29's are the only companies to produce any 4 engine WWII era bombers. Now to find the original images of the work in progress when I first got started. It was about this time I started to document my builds with images. In this case with my Canon AE-1. More to follow. Tally Ho!
10 attached images. Click to enlarge.
