Aurora B-29 "Famous Fighters" Kit # 372

My friend Dave Carter puts in another guest appearance this month - take it away, Dave!

"Recently at a club meeting a friend wanted to sell his unbuilt Aurora B-29 and an old Lindberg B-17. I made the only offer, $20, and left the meeting with both kits. I built a lot of Aurora kits in my pre-teen years. They were easy to find, inexpensive, and could be built in a single modeling session. Later I somehow became aware of the fact that Japanese Zeros weren't yellow and Me-109s weren't metallic red. By Junior High I had moved on to more detailed kits like Revell, Monogram. and the hard-for-me-to-find Airfix. Just the same the old Aurora kits were memorable for exciting and fun modeling.

The Aurora B-29 is in 1/76 scale and has 51 parts molded in silver and clear. Don't expect much detail. The two pilot figures have no lower bodies, just heads and shoulders, and the landing gear, engines, and interior are very simplified. The landing gear struts and doors fit into small locating holes under the model - there are no open gear bays. A nice clear plastic stand allows for easy in flight display - just leave off the gear struts and doors. Interestingly, the stand provided doesn't match that shown in the instructions.

Aurora tried to simulate detail with surface texture rather than a lot of parts, as this made their kits both less expensive to produce and easier to build. The B-29 has lots of rivets and this gives the shiny silver plastic a busy appearance. The result is eye catching and exciting even if overstated. The outlines of the decals are molded into the plastic parts. I always wondered, did they do this to aid decal placement or because some modelers wanted to paint the marking themselves?

The kit has some basic shape problems. The leading edge of the tail looks to be swept back too much and the nacelles lack depth. The decals are not accurate for any real B-29. Even so the kit must have been well received by modelers as Aurora marketed it for twenty years, from 1955 to 1975."

Till next month, "Build what YOU like, the way YOU want to".
Be sure to visit Al's Place while you're surfing the 'Net!