Construction begins, naturally enough with the cockpit. This area is pretty complete and uses decals for the instruments.  Overall color is an interior green with OD seat cushions and black instrument panels. While all the various gluing and painting of the interior was done, the inside of the fuselage was painted interior green in the cockpit area. Engine half interiors and the compressor faces were painted aluminum. Actually, any other bits that need aluminum paint were also done at this time (which is most of the kit). The aluminum makes it easier to see mold seams and such so that clean-up of these parts is more complete.

The wings, tailplanes and engine nacelles were then glued together and the mating surfaces cleaned up. Filler was used on some of the seams to smooth things out. Back at the fuselage, the interior was glued in as was a rather hefty nose weight. I like to use fishing sinkers or you can go to local tire store and rob the weight trash bucket for the tape on types of tire weight. The folks there will usually be glad to allow you to grab what you need. A ten minute stopover will often glean enough lead weight to last you for years!!

Once that was dry, the small windows were glued in and the fuselage was glued together. The now completed engine nacelles were then painted overall aluminum and then areas near the exhaust were given other metallic shades. For all of these metallics, I used Testors Metallizers. The fuselage required some filler in several areas as I had thought it would. When dry, and smoothed out, the wings were attached. I had made sure that the pylons fit well prior to this as getting to any seams on the inside next to the fuselage will be very difficult if not impossible. The fit of the wings was good, though I did have seams that needed filling. This kit has the wings attach to the side rather than as a full span assembly. Makes it easier to mold, but requires some care on the builder's part to make sure that the anhedral is the same for both of them.

Painting the B-66is really quite easy. Aluminum everywhere! I can easily say that I went through almost a bottle of Aluminum Metallizer on this one!  Once the paint wasdry, I masked off the lower radome and the antenna panels on the tail. These were painted flat black. The anti-glare panel was painted olive drab once the surrounding area was also masked to prevent overspray problems. The nose and fuselage antennas were hand painted with flat black. 

Now that most of the kit was painted, it was time for the decals. Brilliantly painted is not a term one would use for any B-66 unit. However, they were not without color. The kit decals are quite nice and superior (in my opinion) to what you'd get in the Italeri boxing. There are markings for two USAFE RB-66s.The first is an RB-66B of the 42 TRS/10 TRW based at RAF Chelvston in 1960. Ithas a nice 'comet' design on the tail and a large red stripe on the engines. The boxtop kit. Naturally, that is the one I wanted to do. I put on all the common markings first. These went on well using Microsol. The last parts of the sheet I used were the colorful unit markings. I put on the tail markings first and used some Solvaset to help them conform to the fin tip. Well, one of them slipped and I was too late in trying to move it. I destroyed the decal.