Actually, with all that you and I discussed about this kit, I failed to mention that the True Details wheels are a must for this kit and not so much for the life raft either. The kit wheels are absolutely horrible. They have this weird scalloped tread design that cannot be fixed. Good on you for getting the wheels. Incidentally, I was over at a mate's house looking through his stash and came across a Koster's vacuform kit of the A-20. The box illustration was of a gun nosed G from the 410th BG. I remember the nose art on this G was the name RUTH. I cannot recall the code letters though. If you want, I can call me mate and ask him what the codes were in case you want to do a generic A-20G from this group. I can also get you the decal sheet from the kit as my mate has no intention of building it. He only purchased it to use the detail parts in it on his AMT A-20.

Got started on the kit yesterday afternoon. Mostly interior painting for now, but as soon as I get some assembly done, I'll shoot some pictures.

A few observations about this one. The plastic in my kit is very soft. The sprue attachments on the fuselage halves were huge, and if care isn't used removing them, there will be holes to fill. There are mold nubblies all over the place, the worst one being on part #34, which is the nose gear strut torque links, which are tiny. It will be difficult to get those off without destroying the part. The exhaust outlets around the cowl are molded as separate parts, so there will be 28 little plastic blobs of joy to attach before painting. Why they didn't just mold them onto the cowl is beyond me. Same goes for the vertical fin, which is a separate part. The nose is two separate halves that are then joined to the main part of the fuselage. I read several reviews that say to attach these to the fuselage before gluing them together. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Seamus, you're correct about the kit tires. Not only is the tread weird, but they are flattened enough to look like someone let half the air out of them! PM inbound on the decals...

Chuck, my last 1/48 twin (A-26) took eleven years to finish. Hopefully this one will go a little faster...

Just a note Jaime, but SAC (Scale Aircraft Conversions) does a landing gear set for this kit in white metal. Goes for about 15.00 in case you are interested.

My Tamiya Lancaster has been going on since 1999. So I know how it is. In fact did some work on the engines the other day. Otherwise it is on the work bench whenever I get back to it. At the time there wasn't much in a way of detail bits to help it. But things have been made available since that time.

After a short hiatus to finish my little Ki-61, it's back to work on the A-20. Cockpit is now complete. Seamus sent me an instrument panel decal from a short run A-20 kit. It needed a little trimming to fit the panel, but I think it's an improvement over just drybrushing the panel. The panel instrument faces had no detail on them, which was taken care of by the decal. The rest of the panel was drybrushed with some white, with red and yellow details added so the panel wouldn't look so bland. The sidewall panels were finished in the same manner, using some internet photos for color reference. The entire assembly was then then given a black wash to accentuate some of the detail, followed by some silver chipping in wear areas. The life raft was painted and added behind the pilot's seat.

The box under the cockpit floor is the nose wheel well.

A few little quirks - the forward cockpit bulkhead doesn't quite fit correctly with the rest of the cockpit in place, so the forward alignment tabs on the fuselage sides were removed, which solved the problem. The kit bomb bay detail is not worth using, so I'm going to leave the doors closed. All the exterior doors are molded in the closed position - to show them open, you have to cut them apart. There are no tabs in the fuselage to mount the bomb doors to, so these were made from scrap and glued to the fuselage. The gun nose is molded as two separate halves, which I've already glued to the main fuselage. If you use a little care in alignment, no filler will be needed at the joint and assembly will be a little easier to deal with.

Gun turret is next...

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Nice start, Jaime. I have the same kit, but inappropriate decals for D-Day. Care to sell the ones you don't use?

Morning, Neil! It was good of Seamus to send that, made a world of difference in the way the panel looks. It was a busy weekend with the holiday and all, wish I could have gotten a bit more done.