Something somewhat out of the left field for me for my next build. This one has a personal nostalgia factor for me: when I was a kid, I asked my 2nd brother for a pencil sketch of a jet aircraft and he copied a sketch of a B-58 from a magazine he had. I’ve lost that piece of art but the memory of it has stayed with me since.
This is a Wolfpack-Design rebox of a Minicraft kit from way back when. It includes some extras that the original kit didn’t: a masking sheet and a brass nose probe.
Besides that, I also get free Korean air inside the box. Really not sure why they needed such a big box for so few parts.
Details-wise, The panel lines are pretty out of scale for 1/144.
The parts are still nicely molded: there’s no flash and details are still sharp. However, the parts are unnecessarily thick with the gear doors being particularly clunky.
The kit is from 1998 which isn’t really that long ago but the overall fitting is mostly just OK.
The gear doors were painted in Real Color Zinc Chromate Yellow. I believe the pair of recessed circles inside each gearbay are injection pin marks but honestly, these were too troublesome to fix.
The B-58 has a 3-man crew and sit in ejection capsules as opposed to just chairs. The kit includes a basic cockpit which can’t be seen once installed inside the fuselage.
I added a fishing weight in the space in between the cockpit sections. The weight is held in place with a piece of blu-tack.
There are ugly join lines where the engines connect to the wings which require fairing in.
While dealing with windshield I somehow plopped a drop of black CA glue on the inside of the clear piece. Unwilling to just bin the kit, I tried my best to fix it.
To hide the roughness that’s still somewhat visible, I decided to tint the windows with Tamiya Smoke.
With so few parts, the kit came together quickly with the only real problem being the engines and perhaps the landing gear which are very thin and look fragile. The canopy masks also fit well. Painting is next.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Painting & Finishing
Convair sure made some radical designs back in the day. Many of them weren’t successful like the B-58, CV-880 and 990, and the F2Y Seadart. However, they sure were cool-looking. Those engineers really liked to push the limits of performance out of their projects.
Excellent work on the build so far. I really admire your kits and their excellent paint finishes. The Indonesian Viper and the Desert Storm Recon Phantom are my favorites! Maybe you can give your Hustler company with an Armory 1/144 XB-70. That thing was a beast, but a big beautiful one.
Thanks for the kind comments!
The XB-70 is one of my favorite aircraft. Unfortunately the few shops where I found the Armory kit are asking too much for it. Maybe because it’s really big even in 1/144?