Since I like to build in-flight, I attempted to get a gunner in the turret, but it was not to be. The cage within which he was supposed to fit was so tight, that even after cutting off an arm and shaving him down substantially, once I got him in, he was still too tall for the canopy to fit over him. I decided he would be taking a nap down near the rear gun.

The detail of the kit is terrific – nice panel lines and rivets, plenty of detail in the cockpit, etc. The PE added some dimension to the open bomb bay doors, and nice scale to the underwing radar.

Trying to get this baby all painted up and weathered was a chore. First, because of the way the turret is seated, you have to mask and paint it, and then insert into the fuselage before you close it up. I was not confident I could rotate the turret in such a way to remove the lower masks after being closed, that I removed those before I closed it into the turret, and then of course had to do some awkward masking during the rest of the painting.

I also broke off every pointy thing on the airframe by the time I was done – the aerial mast on the tail and the cockpit both got knocked off – the turret gun, the pitot on the end of the wing, and one of the underwing radars. The only thing I didn’t accidentally break happened to be the radar that sits right in the middle of the underwing decal, so I actually had to break that off to put the decal down, and then reattach. I should have looked more carefully at the decal location before I attached it, but I would have done it the same way anyway so the paint would match. The only projection I didn’t break off was the belly gun!

The decals behaved beautifully. They are delicate and respond well to MicroSol, but be gentle with them or they can fold on themselves.

This was one of the most complicated builds I’ve done in a long time, and though I love what I ended up with, I was really worn out by the time I got it finished. I’m ready for a nice shake-and-bake build!

Thank you Hobby Boss for the kit, and for ratcheting up the quality of 1/72 Avenger offerings (for the adventurous modelers).