Ok. Cob webs blown off and back at it.
Since we last talked, I had done more sanding and filling of the fuselage and wing panel lines. Next up was the addition of weights to the nose and closing this are in with the separate cowl piece. First though, the cowl provided with the kit has the two inner cannon openings faired over which is not correct for Red 8. My bird had all 4 cannons open to the elements so I had to open the two up. Fortunately, there are molded sleeves on the inside which served as decent guides for a drill and I was able to drill them out and shape the troughs without much grief. The pic below shows the port trough opened up with the starboard one still appearing as supplied with the kit.
Before installing the cowl, I determined the amount of nose weight needed by balancing the model on a knife handle centered on the main gear attachment points. I would have like to press fit the gear struts in temporarily to do this but the attachment detailed provided doesn't lend itself to that. In any event, I determined that two lead fishing weights of 4.6 grams each would do the trick. Making them fit in the space took some doing though and I ended up hammering them to shape and fitting them as shown.
The cowl was a tight squeeze and, in trying to make it fit, I didn't sand the fouling edges evenly so there were some gaps that I had to contend with. These I filled with varying thicknesses of sheet styrene.
After filing and sanding this area down, it was time for the first trial coat of primer to see where more work was needed.
Not bad for a first pass. There are a couple of panel lines that still show a bit and you can see file scratches at the cowl that need to be dealt with but no real drama. I'll do a bit tomorrow at lunch and start adding the panel lines for the cowl back in before re-priming for a second look-see.