Some progress has been made. As is the norm, cockpit was first up. For some reason I completely forgot to take any shots of the cockpit painted but before installation into the fuselage. None-the-less this first shot is for all the main components, assembled where appropriate and ready for paint. In the absence of finding information to the contrary, I went with the recommended cockpit green from the instructions (Mitsubishi cockpit green, I think).
Once I got the paint dry I was quick to pop it into the fuselage and stitch it all together. I must say that this Finemolds kit assembles beautifully, with no major gaps, misalignments or general phaffing about! It's a great contrast to the Italeri Stuka which is giving me no end of challenges! (Not to mention testing my patience).
Once it was all stitched up, and after I got the wings on (again with no major fit or alignment issues) I remembered to take a couple of shots. You may recall I included a set of after-market paper/fibre seatbelts. Again, I failed to take shots as I was painting them, but I am really happy with the way they turned out. As you can see via the shot from the front, they took to the paint quite well and folding them into shape only required some bending and I used a tiny bit of water to soften them for shaping and let them dry hard in place. Definitely more fragile than PE belts, but one heck of a lot easier to install and manipulate.
It is worth noting that the kit comes with a decal for the instrument panel, which they say to place onto a smooth instrument panel blank, rather than the one with raised details. So, of course I decided to see if I could get the decal settled down into the raised detail panel. As you can see it kind of worked out OK. If I look closely with a magnifier I can see where the decal isn't properly settled or where it might have some tiny tears from being stretched too far, but from a naked eye perspective it works out just fine.
The next couple of shots are just wider views of the model now that the fuselage is complete and the wings have been mounted.
The only place I have struck an issue with fit is the underside of the gull wing section joint where the strengthening rib runs. The end piece which juts out past the trailing edge is moulded to the top wing, with the rest of the rib on the lower wing panel. This left a tiny little gap which I filled with a teeny wedge of 0.25mm thick plastic card. I've got a slightly blurry zoom at the point in question. Once its shaped to match the rib, you won't even know there was a gap there.
I have done a few other small bits and pieces that I have either not photographed or have not loaded to the PC from the camera. With luck I will get some time this weekend to get the undercarriage mounted and some paint on.
I am impressed with how well this kit has fit together. It has been a pleasure to build it. Not sure I'd call it a "shake and bake" kit, but it's pretty darn close.
That'll do me for tonight, thanks for stopping by!