Boeing B-52G Stratofortress: 34 BS, 366 WG

Revell #4583 B-52G parts with #4584 B-52H fuselage halves. Traded G strakelet fuselage and pylons for H straight wing fuselage. Thank you Jonah! 

Wing - fuselage test fit. Hmm, I will have to add some filler to close gap at trailing edge. 

Fuselage gluing. Went together extremely well. Only slight gap at nose, which I will fill with super glue. I painted the cockpit, only to remember that I will use Caracal decals for windscreen. Doh! 

.50 cal turret had two sink holes on l/r sides; have puttied. 

So, now to assembling the engines. For some reason, even though the parts look very similar, the inboard & outboard engines are numbered differently, so I will follow the directions.  

Sample engine pods, faces, and exhausts. 

Inboard (longer) and outboard (shorter) pylons. 

Outboard engine pylons glued. 

Outboard engines glued. 

Inboard engines & pylons glued. 

After removing the rubber bands, i can see a small gap in the nose radome and behind the cockpit. 

I took a small nail file and tried to sand the ridge flat without trying to remove too much detail. 

Excess glue sanded down along the seem. 

So before I do any putty work, I decided to glue on the cockpit canopy; it fit like a charm! I will have to add the ejection hatch rails from stretched sprue (two per door) to the upper hatches. 

Oh, I almost forgot. Before further engine assembly to the pylons, I will drill a small hole just over half way back. Revell moulded the lower notch on the accessory drive, but not the hole. They also forgot the cooling vents below each engine face. 

The two available options for gray paint at my local Michaels store.  

Methinks the primer gray is closer to gunship gray.  

I had to rob my Revell (ex-Crown) B-52H of its Skybolt pylons for the stub pylons on each wing. 

I will trim each pylon longitudinally into two pieces; one for the main stub pylon and the remaining piece for the short pylon between the engines.  

Putty night tonight. Will sand seams on Saturday afternoon. Oh, I sanded off the chaff/flare bins from the top of the horizontal stabs. Thought I would build the MiG-23 Flipper (Ye-152) while I had the putty out. It needs it! 

Sanded with CRM Hobbies sanding swizzle sticks: medium, fine, & polish. Now for putty round two! Canopy will be decals, not to worry. Still have to add wing trailing edge fillet and upper ejection seat door rails.  

Engine detail and fit were a little disappointing. Putty round two. Not sure how I will replicate small cooler intakes on front bottom of each engine. See color photo above.  

Sanded off chaff bins on top of stab. Oh, on extreme left is one wing tank that developed a glue sink hole, hence the putty. 

I broke off one .50 cal gun barrel, lower port side. I promptly glued it back on, so as not to lose it completely.  

Stretched spruce glued on to simulate the ejection seat door rails. I will trim and lightly sand to taste.  

Unabashed advertising for CRM Hobbies in south St. Louis, MO. These sanding sticks are awesome and a bargain.  

I saw these Hasegawa micro saws on another blog post used to cut out vacuformed kit parts. Again, extremely useful! I ordered mine from Plaza Hobbies in Japan, along with some very thin kabuki tape. 

Here is a curved blade with teeth on both inside and outside edges. Key advantages are flexibility and fine cut. 

Trimmed the Crown B-52H pylon mounting tab in just over a minute. Five seconds with a swizzle stick and GTG! Did I say that I love these micro saw blades? I will use one of the long straight blades to trim the pylon into two pieces longitudinally 

Glued on two plasticard shims from the tab that I cut off the Revell pylon. Nothing like saving plastic!  

Side view. 

Hmm... that looks a whole lot better. The shims are a little long, but I will trim to size as I adjust the wing-fuselage joint to get a good tight seam. 

Preparing to cut the pylons. Masking tape serves two purposes: 1. As guide for saw blade cut; 2. To give me something to hold onto as the piece wants to move with the saw. 

And done! A couple of notes: 1. Go slowly and don't push the saw blade as it tends to want to bind and then bend and flex. 2. Be careful when wiping excess plastic shavings from the blade, as I sliced my thumb pretty good. No stitches, just a bandage. 

Wing pylons in place. I measured and made small holes with the tip of my X-Acto blade in each wing for the pylon mounting tabs. Apparently, only B-52Gs carried the mid wing pylons, as none of the B-52H photos I looked at show them. 

For some reason the there was a step between the upper & lower wing halves, creating a noticeable gap when mating with the fuselage. I shimmed with pasticard and trimmed off the excess. 

Vertical view of the shim. 

Frontal view of the wings mating to fuselage. Wingtips are supported to ensure proper droop angle. I will probably have to recontour the windscreen, the shape is just not right. 

Top view of wing to fuselage joints. There is a slight gap still, which i will fill with micro styrene and super glue.  

I went ahead and primed the engines. They don't look that bad, just lack the lower cooling vents and starting cartridge exhausts on the left side. I will probably replicate both with black decal.  

Taped over the vortice generators to protect them from the putty and subsequent sanding. Even though I glued some very thin stretched sprue into the gap, it still required a little putty. Will sand tomorrow.  

Wings on and seam sanded! Engines on! Tailplane on! Ready for paint 

Tailplane set at 0 deg angle of incidence. I broke off the errant lower port .50 cal barrel again and will replace with appropriately sized Evergreen rod. 

Starboard engines look much better. Will use black decals for details. 

ECM pod pylon on port wing is slightly askew and tilted outboard. Ah well! It is firmly welded to the wing now! Also note that the engine pylons slightly missed their wing fillets.  

As noted above, the fact that the lower port wing shifted inboard during gluing, means that the upper port wing pylon fillets moved slightly outboard vis-a-vis the engine pylons. I will try to file to shape before painting. 

First coat of primer. Wing-fuselage joint looks kinda ugly to port, stbd, not so bad. I will sand and re-putty the joint. I will also have to address the engine wing-pylon joints. Oh, and fill in the cockpit windows; didn't realize how much relief exists 

Window frames sanded, final coat of paint applied. Still need to paint & touch up the wheels and engine intakes / exhausts. Port front 3/4 view. 

Starboard side view. 

Top view. Time to start decaling. 

Decaling has begun. Custom ALPS printed decals on very thin decal film. Stbd tail. 

Port tail. The leading edge of the Thunderbird tail band curled under, so I will fix with a little black paint.  

More decals applied tonight. Most of the custom deals are on. 

Tail with serial & ECM panel decals. Still have some Caracal stencils to place. 

Accidentally dropped some water on the windscreen decal, and so trimmed it out and applied it quickly. 

Added custom decal for Lt Col Ed Rice's name to port cockpit side. More Caracal stencils to follow. 

Tail walkways. Seems a rather irregular pattern, but it is accurate. I will have to add more Microsol to get the decal to settle down over the vortex generators. 

Cockpit Stbd side view; all decals applied. 

Cockpit port side view; all decals applied. 

Overall view. Still need to add sealer coat of clear lacquer. Then add the wheels and doors.  

C'est finis! Not perfect, but I am proud of this one. And I will use what I have learned on my bevy of BUFFs to be built later this year. Stay tuned! 

3/4 port front view. What cannot be discerned is the fact that on a level surface, the stbd outrigger touches the ground, but the port outrigger hangs a scale 3 or 4 ft above the ground, just as in the project header photo. 

Port side view. 

The Caracal window decals snuggled down nicely after I filled the slight indentations moulded into the clear part by Revell. I did not use any setting solution. All the Caracal decals went on beautifully. 

Stbd rear fuselage. I used custom decals for the US insignia on fuselage sides and upper wings. 

I cut a short piece of very thin Evergreen rod and super glued it to the missing stump (lower left barrel), then painted the barrels dark metallic grey. I have since touched up the radars and barrels. They look much better now. 

Caracal horizontal stab walkway lines snuggled down over the vortex vanes using first MicroSol, then MicroSet, then cleaned with watered down rubbing alcohol before clear coating. Just beautiful. Thank you, Kursad! 

Custom tail markings graciously provided by Chris Weir! Thank you! I couldn't have completed this project without you!