The U.S. Air Force’s Douglas B-66 was developed from the Navy’s Douglas A-3 Skywarrior. The B-66s were used in a variety of roles to include navigation for fighters, electronic reconnaissance, weather reconnaissance, and testing components for future aircraft.

Scale Aircraft Conversion has produced a set of metal landing gears for Testor’s B/RB-66 kits. Metal landing gear is sturdier than plastic gear, and Scale Aircraft Conversions has added details missing from the kit’s landing gear. You will have to use either super glue or epoxy to attach the gears to the model.

These gears are a direct one-for-one replacement of the kit’s molded landing gear. As a helpful guide, I labeled the parts in one picture since there is no installation or placement instructions. To me, this is the biggest flaw of the landing gear set.

Starting with the main landing gear, I glued the metal gear into place. The fit is excellent, although some tweaking to the drag link may be required. A note of caution here: The B-66 landing gear is not perfectly vertical, but is mounted at a slight angle. I used the axle of each gear to get the angle correct for each gear. There is some added detail in the form of strut links that are glued onto the oleo part of the strut.

The nose landing gear is tricky to install. You may have to tweak the angle of the triangular drag link on the strut to get the landing gear into the wheel well. There is an added detail piece that is separate from the gear, and I glued that into its approximate place in the wheel well. It does connect the strut to the walls of the wheel well, and positioning can be difficult. I had to file off some of the sides of the detail strut to get the proper fit.

The last metal component to install is one that the kit doesn’t have – a nose landing gear door actuator. I glued this piece into the proper place in the nose wheel well and on the nose gear door.

The B-66 kit that I used the Scale Aircraft Conversions kit on was built to represent a WB-66D on display at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

With some minor tweaking, this metal set of B/RB-66 landing gear from Scale Aircraft Conversions improves the look of Testor’s B-66 kits. I highly recommend this aftermarket kit, and a big heartfelt thanks goes to Scale Aircraft Conversions for providing this sample kit.