PBY review

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Review of the Monogram PBY "Black Cat"

Another in a series of "why haven't they released this in 1/48th scale" kits was released in two different versions of the Consolidated Cat. Both kits are pretty much the same, with the exception of the openings in the sides for the wheels, and the wheel wells.
If you're going to build either kit with the wheels extended (or the beaching gear) you will need LOTS AND LOTS of weight in the nose to keep the big tail off the ground.
I built the kit pretty much straight forward as per the instructions, but I left the wing off until the kit was completed. You will find some flash in the struts, and the alignment of the tail/stabilizer will require some filling, as will the body of kit it's a bit off. Those of you who like to have perfectly aligned panel lines will have to sand off and rescribe, as they are a bit off.
The cockpit area could have been a bit more detailed, as with the large canopy, you can see everything inside. The throttle quadrant isn't too bad for an injection mold, but I'm sure someone will release a better throttle, and even a complete cockpit. The seats lack any detail, so, unless you buy a set of brass buckles, you will have to paint the detail on them.
The waist gun mounts have some cleaning up to make a more believable mount. Part of the gun belt is included, but unless you install some sort of kit bashed flexable gunbelt, there will be a noticable gap between the kit ammo belt and the guns. If you still have one of those Monogram 1/24 scale UH1 Huey kits from several years back, the rubber belts would make it look a whole lot better (I didn't think about this until my kit was
finished. Isn't that the way it always works out?).
The forward gun mount has the option of the "ball" or traditional open gun placement, I built the ball version. The guns aren't anything really to write home about. They aren't much more than the basic shape of the machine gun. Again, aftermarket will have to pickup the slack.
The engines will look better with a small amount of drybrushing or washing, but photoetched brass was not included in this kit for the ignition harness as is the case in some of the other Monogram kits.
As I mentioned earlier, I painted the entire kit without the wings attached, and decaled them prior to mounting the wing, as with the size of the kit, I didn't want to knock off the floats or ding the wing. This is a LARGE kit!
The decals are along the quality of the lastest kits that Mongram/Revell has released recently, and went on without too much trouble.
Once the decals were dry, I attached them with super glue for a better joint. The wing assembly fitted pretty well and the spar to which it is attached didn't require very much sanding to get the wing level. After the wing had partially set up, I attached the four struts which, surprisingly enough, leveled the wing the rest of the way. One note on the struts the directions aren't really clear which way they go, so I would highly recommend picking up the new release of the Squadon/Signalbook PBY Walkaround. This latest series of Sq/Sg books is a real gem, there are lots of closeup pictures of the actual planes, and in some cases inaccuraces in museum planes are pointed out.
After the wing was dry, I installed 60 micron gold copier corona wire for the antenna. Since the antenna can be located in several differnt configurations, check the specific aircraft you're building for proper placement of the wire. Also, if you plan on moving your finished kit around, bring along some superglue. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see the antenna wire stretches from both outer wings, to the tail, then back to the radio operator's position. It's likely to snap off the tail at some point.
In all, not a bad kit. I spent around 2025 hours on mine. If anyone knows of an aftermarket cockpit set, let me know.

Review and pics courtesy of Rusty Harris