Panda 1/144 B-1B Lancer

For a peek at the naked plastic and a short history of the type, visit the preview.

Before starting on construction of this kit, I had to ask myself a serious question. Did I want to do this on the ground or in the air?  This isn't a question that most modelers take lightly when doing a kit. The big questions are; will the gear doors fit into the respective spaces (often the kit is designed so that is not possible), and where am I going to get a stand?

Not so easy, that last question. There were times (fade back to a youth of 29 cent models and no color TV) when stands were (no pun intended) standard equipment in a model. In fact, several of the Comet, Aurora and Revell kits then available did not come with any landing gear and had the doors molded in the closed position. Fortunately, I also build airliners from time to time and several of them still provide stands that will work well on a 1/144 B-1. Test fitting showed that the gear doors fit fairly well and I really wasn't looking forward to trying to paint those rather pathetic wheels.

That decision having been made, I started closing things up. As I feared, fit was OK, but not perfect. Fortunately, the hot glues work wonders in getting these things to fit. If they can't be trimmed, just flood the offending section with this glue and let them melt into place! This I did and later the entire area will be sanded down where needed. Probably the worst fitting parts were the forward nose gear door, the crew entrance door and the bomb bay doors. The notches in the doors do not match with the bulkhead between the fuel tank area and missile area. I trimmed away at the bulkhead until an acceptable fit was obtained.

Then I did a bit of work on the cockpit. This area was painted dark gull grey as were the seats. The seat cushions were painted a green khaki color with the center console and anti-glare panel painted flat black. A very nice instrument panel decal is provided and that was put on. It reacted well to setting solutions so hopes are high that the kit decals will be equally well behaved. Downside of any cockpit work is that most will be nearly invisible when installed!

There are several bulkheads and an 'anti-see-through' panel that fit into the fuselage sections so those were installed and the fuselage halves mated while they dried. During that, the engine pods were assembled. There are five 'deflectors' that fit inside each engine pod. I found the forward right one on both pods to interfere with gluing the upper and lower halves, so those were trimmed down to get the halves to fit. No painting info is given for the inside of these, so I didn't paint them, waiting until the final stages to make any decision on that. Regardless of what color is used, little will be seen behind the baffles. Though the fit was good, I puttied the seam and a sink mark that was on the forward section of both engine pods.

Meanwhile, the cockpit had dried and it was glued into the upper fuselage. The cement points are quite positive so there is no doubt as to what goes where. The aft cone halves were also glued and filler used on it. During this time, the swing wing arm was glued to each wing using the mounts provided. It is a well designed section that should eliminate any possibility of accidentally gluing the wings in one position. When dry, this was placed on the lower fuselage and the wing hold down caps glued in place.

I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing as things had gone rather smoothly to this point. This was the time to glue the upper and lower fuselage together. This is where I ran into the first real fit problem. Yes, the upper and lower sections do mate, but they are not 100% aligned. I think that perhaps removing the alignment pins from the forward fuselage sections will help, but then one loses the 'hold down' effect of these while gluing. Needless  to say, there are steps that will have to be filed and filled to get things smooth. Since I was going to be doing some quality filling, the nose and tail cones were glued on and the whole thing set aside to dry.

Then I got down to the filler and sanding. Fortunately, the areas to be done are easy to get to and will blend in nicely. It only took a couple of sessions to get things nice and smooth. With that done, I attached the fin. It also had a large gap where it attached to the fuselage so that also needed some filler work. Meanwhile the engine pods were glued to the underside, since the whole shootin' match was to be painted the same color anyway. As you can see from the above images, this is not a filler free kit! At this juncture, I glued in the cockpit glass. This part is a loose fit to say the least. It fits well enough, but the upper section is actually a bit smaller than the plastic to which it joins so there is a rather substantial gap. Fixing it will take some care with the filler, but it should be possible to fill it without too much damage to the surrounding windscreen. As I had surmised, not much of the interior can actually be seen once the windscreen is in place so no need for a lot of work in the cockpit!

After filling and sanding around the cockpit, the small canards were glued in place, the canopy masked and it was time for paint!