With the interior complete it was time to close up the fuselage.

For a cheaper kit the parts fit together quite well and only minimal sanding was required to make a smooth seam.

Here are some pictures showing the progression of work. Here an oily wash has been applied to one engine with a clean one beside it to show the difference. Engines installed and the wings glued together. The last blurry picture shows how I covered the engines with wet paper towel so I could paint the rest of the plane.

One of the last photoetch parts to go together was the framework in the wheel well.

And finally some pictures of the base paint job and other preparations.

With the yellow painted it is really starting to look nice. I painted Alclad II white primer under the yellow areas to brighten it a bit.

I bought my wife a vinyl cutter for christmas and was really hoping that it would work for the "Salt Lake Katie" on the site of the fuselage. I could not be happier. I had to do quite a bit of work in Photoshop getting an image that could be used with the cutter, and there is a little ragged edge on the finished product... But the big letters are only about a 1/2 inch tall !!! When I clean it up a little it will look really nice, and with the naked eye you can't see the ragged look anyway. Only when you have a magnified photo to look at.

A little work went into making the nose art "Katie". I had a decal set from MIke Grant Decals for the B-24 "Strawberry Bitch" which is in the Air Force Museum in Dayton but the girl on that plane is quite a bit smaller than the one on Salt Lake Katie so I could not use it. You can see the size difference in the pictures below. I had to scan the Mike Grant decal and enlarge it to the proper size in photoshop. I then printed it on some white decal paper with my laser printer. It turned out very nice and after some touch up painting it worked well. I also made decals for the serial number (actual number) and tail code. I did not know the tail code so I used "M", the last name of the guy that I am building this for.

These are just some random pictures including the superchargers, landing gear and parts I broke off while handling the model.

I used the Master Models .50 calibur gun barrels and they are a huge improvement over the kit parts. These things absolutely amaze me. I am also amazed that I was able to drill a straight hole in the gun body to glue them in. One picture shows clearly how the cooling sleve fits down over the gun barrel. Amazing!!!

The base framework was made by the 15 year old grandson of Richard Miner out of some nice walnut (I think). The following pictures are of the process of situating the B-24 on the base and working on the scenery.

In the main reference picture I used you can see the front of a US 2-1/2 ton Duce and a Half cargo truck and some people standing around the plane. So I had to add the truck and some men. These pics are mostly the men, I will add more truck pics later. I will say that the little Tamiya truck model is one of the best engineered kits I have ever built. It almost fell together. I also used the Tamiya accessories set for the oil drums and jerry cans. Notice the scratch built camera and garden hose in 2 of the figures hands. The hose is rosin core solder with a super fine fishing line glued into the hollow core to represent water. I am a little amazed that it worked.

And here are the completed pictures of the finished diorama. Sadly there is no hardware to go along with it. I guess it was not a hit with the judges. Other people sure seemed to like it. There should soon be some pictures of the contest on the IPMS Boise, ID web site.