Well here we go, I am an extremely slow builder, but it is my hope that blogging it here will entice me to build at a more consistent pace. Of course the fact that I work 60 hours a week and tinker on vintage cars, take care of my yard and house as well as my ill wife may have some impact on my pace.

All that aside I am excited about this build. I am using the Monogram kit, I started re-scribing it years ago and am pretty much done. One of the thing I discovered long ago was that before you move on take pictures because your errors seem to pop under the unforgiving eye of the camera. I have done all the panel lines and now I have to go back and fix my mistakes. I circled one of my mistakes in the picture. I started the build with the wings, closing out the air inlets, opening the air inlet scoops and drilling out the exhaust. I am discovered from pictures that a great deal of the wheel wells are fiction in the Monogram kit. It is not my goal to correct that because for the most part no one will ever see that anyways. Once I put the wings together, I will begin work on the fuselage, as you can see I have lots of aftermarket thanks to my very good friend Ed. I will not use it all but selectively to produce the best results with the least amount of work. (MAYBE)

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I have reached out to my friend Ed, and should have paint on the way soon. In the mean time I continued with my wing build up and focused on the Engines. I am going to add photo etch cowl flaps, but I find photo-etch in general for certain things more trouble than its worth. So the engines themselves are just the kit supplied engines. I used nylon thread to add the spark plug wires and painted them. I think in the cowls they will look just fine.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Once the engines are in their cowlings you won't be able to tell whether they are kit engines or aftermarket. The wires are a great touch.

Really nice touch there Walt, @luftwaffe-birdman. It's the kind of detail that really sets a kit off compared to others.

Well my appreciation for and dislike of Photo-etch continues. After reviews the poor quality of the resin, and looking at pictures, I decided to use Eduard Photo-etch to enhance the interior along with some simple scratch building. I spoke with my good friend Ed, and my paint will be here soon but I will start painting soon. I still have some more details to add, but I am liking where this is headed, an good painting should really make it pop.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

That's a nice and really detailed project coming along, Walt, @luftwaffe-birdman.
Eagerly following.
Your picked up subject is great and indeed has a lot of personality!
All the best!

Interior looks great, and will look even better with some paint and weathering. I have this kit in my stash, so I am really interested to see how it all goes together. I'm saving it for a special occasion, since I also have 4 or 5 Monogram B-17s that need to be built at some point. I'm not sure what possessed me to buy all of these kits when I don't have room to display them all. My only defense is that I think B-17s are cool and at one time they were a lot less expensive than they are now.

Busy weekend around the house, but was able to get some time in. Got the interior green painted and then the yellow oxygen tanks and then started the wood flooring and desks. just adding those three colors and it is already starting to look better.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.