Hobby Boss 1/32 B-24J Liberator

Hi all
Just wanted to share some work I've been doing on a commission build of the Hobby Boss 1/32 B-24J Liberator.  It's been in the works for a long time as there's a lot of extras going into this one including lights.  Currently as I write this, the fuselage internals are 95% complete.  A lot has been left off until towards the end as it's either likely to get broken during the bulk of the build, wiring is yet to go in for the lights or it simply gets in the way.  I stalled the project mid last year due to work commitments and tiredness but mostly due to a mental block I had about how to wire the lights.  I studied electronics when I was in high school and in college but that was such a long time ago and naturally loose the basics if not practiced regularly so I had to re-educate myself somewhat for this project.

So here I am today having just completed the wiring for the wings after several attempts and blown LEDs and just dodgy routing of the wires.  Some modifications have been made in both the wings, gear bay box and the wing spar to accommodate the wiring.  I'll leave some previous photos of the internal work here and following is a video from my YouTube channel showing the wiring of the two wings.

Hobby Boss 1/32 B-24J Liberator Update

 

 

 

 

 
 

Wow that looks really amazing. Nice work so far. So many details!

Looking good so far young Padawan
Quick tip, I would literally have those LED's running for 24 hours before you button it up, leave anything electronic running for 24 hours to soak test it, it's always the first period that these diodes die.
Another thing you should look out for is SMD LEDs they are tiny but so cheap, a lot of them come prewired with a 100 ohm resistor so that's less work for you and they are very cheap and very small.
My next B-24 will have running engines and a smoke generator I'm building for startup, will you have the Nav lights flashing? Shout if you want a flasher circuit built, I can knock one up using an ATTiny 13, very small and you can hide it easily inside.

Absolutely phenomenal! …love the progress, and that ball turret is insanely cool!!! Looking forward to seeing this come together.

The B-24 mojo is back, been too long.  So far the wing lights are taken care of however the plastic itself needs some modification, more on that in a moment.

Thanks to Gary Fowkes who hooked me up with some really cool lights which were perfect for the position lights in the tail fins and for under the tail gun turret.  These have been installed with a 3 volt power cell for which I made a cradle attached to the underside of the horizontal stabiliser and occupies the space forward of the tail turret.  There is provision for the tail assembly to be attached with magnets however there is scope for further testing to see if I can wire the tail lights in with the wing lights.  As the model will eventually be placed in a display cabinet, it may be inconvenient to continually remove the tail to turn the lights on and off.  Testing will determine the outcome.

As for the wings, to aid in handling this beast and for storage convenience, I want the wings to slide on and off the main spar.  The kit setup is rather annoying. Again thanks to Gary, he provided some great reference photos and as well as an in person look at his B-24 to see how he was able to make the wings slide on and be removable.

Next comes the interior lights for the cockpit, bomb bay and waist gunner area.  More to come on that soon.

 

 



 

 

 

Very nice, great to see your update. The lights are going to look amazing.

Looking bloody good! Coming along nicely

Very cool. It’s a big fella, I was trying to make sense of the wing-fuselage join for a while before realising it was the horizontal stabiliser!