George, @gblair

I hope that your new home is completed in a timely fashion, so you can get settled in and start building again. Your first project sounds like a good one. I have only built two Buff's in my lifetime. One was a tiny kit more like a 1/200 scale as a kid. The other one was the old AMT 1/72 scale version that I built shortly after I returned to the hobby. It was sprayed in overall Gunship Gray using a rattle can, and it's still hanging up in our garage. That's a big plane, even in 1/72. I can only imagine how big one would be in 1/48 scale.

@lgardner - you're 90% right, but the 10% is the important part. That resin tail is nearly as heavy as the rest of the model, as it is! You need to put on your face mask, activate the blower system to clear the air, take your Dremel and dremel those two parts down about half their thickness, if not a bit more. Then you'll only have to cram weight into every space ahead of the wing except the cockpit. And definitely get the SAC white metal landing gear, because this thing will be heavy on that plastic gear. I speak from experience on all this. I didn't take enough weight out of that tail, and the model eventually broke the main gear. Fortunately I was able to dig out the remains and replace it with SAC metal gear. And it's still barely a tail sitter.

I think if I did another one, I'd just live with the "fat" tail.

Tom, @tcinla
This is the beaching gear I'm talking about that makes this kit a tail sitter, so no weight will be needed in the nose. I might not have to grind anything if I go this route. I will likely drill some holes in the resin tail to hold the beaching tail wheel in place. This is in reference to the "tail dragger" comment I made in an earlier post.

I will likely make the tail wheel strut using brass rod and solder the parts together. This will eliminate the need to grind out the inner portion of the resin tail. The other PBY-5 Monogram kit I have includes these beaching parts in plastic, so I will have a pattern to go from.

Somewhere I have a color photo from WW2 that shows the beaching gear struts were painted red.

The beaching gear is a great way to display the PBY, Louis (@lgardner). The perpetual problem with seaplanes is how to display them, and this is a good answer.