Building planes in flight is neglected by Manufacturers

[taly01]

I decided to build a 1/48 Bf109G-6 after a long break from modelling, I got the Eduard revised molds kit as I wanted something known to be good. I wanted to build it in flight so Eduards 109G seperate radiator flaps were a real help, and I just cut open the oil cooler door sides to have it open a bit. But then I realise no pilot..................yet the kit has 3 different tails options and 4 different cockpit choices, so its not a plastic shortage

I found the Tamiya 109E 1/48 pilot to be a decent fit after trimming his legs and feet a touch. He is painted as a Finnish summer 1944 pilot (i hope).

Now next big problem was building Eduard 1/48 109G-6 with landing gear up, the wheels do not fit in! You need to grind half the thickness off to fit in. Then I find the landing gear covers are too wide to fit into the wings........so i had to sand the edges down. Here is a Fine Molds 1/48 Ki-43-II with the same issue I fixed the same way.

I'm not picking on just this kit, most kits don't have crew figures, and the landing wheels will not fit into the wings, and the covers don't match the wing cut outs. I can understand "scaling" problems to fit the gear into the wings but these days with CAD design a set of raised landing gear should not be too hard to do!

 

[fubar57]

I agree there should be an option showing flight. I have a few danglers that are wheels up and struggled with the fit. One thing I did though was to only install the wheel half that was showing. Having said that, the Airfix 1:48 Defiant that I am currently building does have a wheels up option