Latest progress shots of my 1/144 strike Finback-B:
Wow, the panel lines on this small kit are huge. I guess I could go and fill all those trenches in, but that's more putty-sand-repeat than I resolved myself to do on this build. If this were 1:1 scale, we probably could stash a large sack of Twiglets in those panel lines. The intakes required more sanding than expected to get them to blend better into the intake trunks on the sides of the fuselage. The intake boxes were sharp edged and there's a gradual transition from sharp edge to rounded.
The exhausts don't fit great into the fuselage but it's acceptable to me with what I plan to do with this build. Are all Trumpeter 1/144 kits this craptastic? I always hear good things about the larger scale kits and now am wondering if it's worth spending the coin on the 1/144 Tu-16 Badger kit.
Underside view. The ventral fin was one piece and had two pairs of intakes moulded into each side. I have no clue where they got that idea to do that as that resembles nothing at all on the folding fin assembly of the real Finback-B. Trumpeter's based in China, right? There's tons of Finback-B pics on the 'Net and ten to one they could have had someone actually physically go look at a 1:1 specimen. Whatever. Sanded those little bastards off and then cut the fin. Like the MiG-23/27, the Finback-B's fin folds to the right when the landing gear is extended. On the older Finback-A, there were two smaller ventral fins that were fixed.
I'm not terribly impressed with the pylons in the kit, I may scratchbuild my own out of styrene sheet instead.