Cockpit gets inserted into the first half of the fuselage. It’s a reasonably good fit.
Let’s get scientific: manual calls for 3g of ballast in the nose.
Photograph below is a summary of almost week’s worth of work. This is where the model failed for me. I had to resort to 240 grit sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease to make the fuselage into one streamlined shape. This was followed by 400, and 800 grit, but I’m sure there’s more to come once the primer will be applied and all the miserable joints will be unveiled.
Following the sanding there was a lot of scribing. Especially on the underside. I used 3M masking tape for guiding, and RB Production’s scriber, which I find slightly better than Trumpeter’s one I used to date.
Now, the front canopy. Top section has a green anti-glare coating, so I decidet to paint it from underneath before installing the canopy in place, which will allow me to have the clear plastic on the outside, that I can still buff afterwards in case I will scratch it (which I probably will).
Digression number 1:
For masking the canopy I decided to try the ‘Black Box Putty’ which I recently acquired at the IPMS Ireland show. It was advertised as a perfect reusable putty for masking camouflage patterns. It does not have any advesive, so doesn’t leave any residue as the blue tack, and moulds itself to the surface.
It’s basically very, very thick non-newtonian fluid, which has weird properties (the more force is used against it, the harder the fluid gets). In simple terms – it’s evil, it defies laws of physics, and it’s manufactured with the use of black magic. But it does the job.
Here’s the piece of the putty. On the left photograph – moulded in fingers, on the right photo – after 10 hours in room temperature.
Digression number 2:
After many years of using Tamiya paints with Mr. Color’s Levelling Thinner I decided to finally use the proprietary Tamiya’s acrylic thinner X-20A.
Bad idea. After few attempts to fixed the botched job, I ended up removing the paint completely, re-masking and spraying again. Using Levelling Thinner this time.
Here’s why:
Spare pieces of canopy sprayed with Tamiya’s X25 Clear green. On the left – Mr. COlor thinner, on the right Tamiya thinner. With Tamiya’s I couldn’t get the even coat, resulting with pathed of differrent thickness, and on top of that – some random bubbles on the surface. Both pieces come from the same model, diluted in the same proportions (1:1) sprayed with 1.5 bar pressure. Obviously – I can’t use the Tamiya properly, so Levelling Thinner it is.
State of affairs for today:
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