11 days since the last update so lots to cover. As I said earlier, I straightened out the WNrs, then sprayed on a bit more black touch up, a couple of coats of Future which I allowed to thoroughly dry for about 4 days, worked on the landing gear, sprayed on some Dullcoat, then masked off and painted the wheel wells.
Let's look at the undercarriage first. The below pic shows the kit supplied struts with sink holes filled and the molded in brake hose removed. Unfortunately, these leave a bit to be desired in that the retraction arms are too short and incorrectly attached to the oleos. The bit at the hinge on the arm is supposed to be a hydraulic actuator link, is molded square, and is again too short so that lot got chopped off to await a replacement.
Having chopped off the retraction arm, the next step was to add the cross brace. Again this is molded too short, stopping in mid air as soon as it hides behind the most casual glance into the wheel well. The solution was to extend these bits. The lower strut shows where I drilled a hole in the end of the brace and inserted a piece of fine copper wire to act as a pin. The upper strut shows the extended brace which I formed with a some excess plastic from the trees. Once these were dry, they were filed and sanded to a rounder contour and details were added at the hinge point. Oh, and if you look closely, you can see that I hollowed out the scissor link arms a bit with a Dremel tool to replicate the actual details.
The retraction arms, it turns out, had to be scratch built from card (left in the below pic) as the CMK resin replacements (at right) proved just as bad as the kit supplied parts. In fact, it seems that CMK created copies of these arms using the Hendon museum 410 as a basis. This machine, on close examination of available reference photos, clearly has had the original arms replaced with full-length, unhinged struts.
These bits now await painting, addition of the brake hose, and installation into the wheel wells. The next shot shows the straightened out WNr and the added black paint around it as well as near the M and cross. The WNr has been a bit too obscured and a bit of a slip occurred at the M both of which I left alone. The black men were in a hurry and did not take much care!
Next I'll show you the installed drop tanks. Touch up is still required on the support struts which have received a few strokes of black. Note the Tee shaped antennae to the left and right of the tank with the red lettering. These are for the FuG 101 radar altimeter which I assumed to be present on this aircraft. The landing light is just visible under the tank with the black lettering. The kit supplied mass balances can also be seen. These were quite delicate, being close to scale.
The underside, with the wheel wells traced from the gear doors, masked, and painted with RLM 02:
The final batch of shots show various details of the Dull-coated model with the canopy masks removed. The twin 20's under the nose were added back on, this time being made from brass rod. They are just primed in the below close-up. Remind me to dust the model before taking the next bacth of close-ups. Black shows up dust quite cruelly.
Thanks everybody. Hope to finish the undercarriage this weekend so should get some more pics up tomorrow.