Big, Bad & Beautiful B-29 SUPERFORTRESS

Ron Garcia
Built the original version back in the 70's. Nice kit. I think it still holds up well after all these years. Huge! I recommend adding the wings and stabilizers after sanding but before priming. Yes, those wings will bump everything you have off your table, but the wing to fuselage connection isn't great. You'll want to clean that up before you get to painting. The stabilizers connect inside the kit. One tab overlaps the other. The result is one stabilizer gets pushed up and is flush with the upper surface but not on the bottom. The opposing stabilizer has the opposite effect. I trimmed the tabs but then the weight of the stabilizers and the weird concave mating surface made them a pain to keep level while the cement dried. The cockpit glass needed TLC to conform to the fuselage. Don't even think about trying to build this without a cockpit masking set! I used Eduard's set and it worked great. The plane will be a tail sitter for sure unless you add a massive amount of weight to it. I poured BB's in the area hidden under the cockpit behind the nose wheel well and it it wasn't near enough. I then filled the two forward gun turrets with BB's and the recess where the lower gun turret fit but it was still not enough. I ended up putting rocks(!) in the four engine nacelles and it was barely enough to do the trick. If you haven't built one of these, you're missing out on an impressive kit. My wife walked down to my dungeon one night while I was building it and actually commented on it. See couldn't believe it was the same scale as my other aircraft kits. If some company makes a new state of the art kit of the B-29 in the future - and I have no doubt there will be one - I for one will not buy it. It took me long enough to get this one together because of all the interior detail painting. I couldn't imagine how long a new kit of this would take with the massive amounts of parts and PE that would be sure to be included! As far as this kit, easy to say highly recommended!