1/48 Monogram P-61B Black Widow

Gallery Article by Sean Langley (pigsty) on May 13 2016

 

      

Here’s my latest: Monogram’s old 1/48 Black Widow. It’s finished as a P-61B of the 419th Night-Fighter Squadron, based on Mindanao in 1945.

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Aftermarket additions are True Details wheels, Quickboost guns and engines, Vector transparencies, and Superscale decals. My own little touches are braces on the nosewheel mudguard, wiring and valvegear on the engines, leading-edge intake covers, finer dipole antennae, closing up the cooling gills on the right engine, and better grilles under the engines. The paintwork is Humbrol aerosol black over Halford’s primer, with some help from Klear, and weathered with 3B pencil and chalk pastels.

This is a typical old Monogram kit: nice detail, shocking fit. The pinned primer on ARC was very helpful as a guide to assembly, although I decided life was too short to try to change the cockpit to an accurate P-61B layout. The most useful advice I can give you if you’re building one is: however much nose weight you think you need, you need more. Or use that little clear prop and hope it doesn’t give way.

Sean Langley

Photos and text © by Sean Langley