Something i've been meaning to build for a while is a Bristol F.2B, a Roden version in 1/72 came up on ebay at a decent price so here we are
The kit comes with the same detailed engine as the felixstowe but in this kit there's 2 build options which is nice. You can either build normally with engine enclosed or cut the front off, fit some framework and display with engine on show. for this one i opted to build with the fuselage complete which means you don't fit the rocker assemblies or cooling pipes to the top of the engine otherwise it won't fit inside the fuselage. That all sounds great and this is how roden say to build the engine to fit inside the fuselage, i didn't go mad with the paint as it won't really be seen.
This, in reality is what you end up with and this means the fuselage doesn't meet properly in places.
So the ancillaries were cut off along with the barrels, the barrels are now glued directly to the sides of the fuselage and the crankcase is glued to the radiator and bottom of fuselage. It's the only way i could get the exhaust ports somewhere near where they need to be, get the fuselage closed and have the crankcase and thus the prop shaft sitting square. It was a nice idea from roden and cudos for offering a highly detailed engine even though it won't be seen, in hindsight however i feel a much more simplified engine which fitted in the gap provided would have been the better idea for those building with engine cowl in place.
The interior has some nice details but everything was too wide to fit inside the fuselage, the paint looked a lot better before i had to get serious with a file.
Seatbelts are 1mm masking tape painted in radome tan
The fuselage was finally closed up but some areas just didn't want to talk to each other so once the glue had pretty much set i cracked out the sprue goo and pasted it on. I'll leave that for a good 24hrs to go off and then start the cleaning up process
