Progress has been made already - the main components have been removed from the sprue trees and inspected to see how much work will be required in cleaning up and making sure all joint surfaces are neat.
The good news is that the majority of the moldings are pretty clean, but as highlighted in the first shot there are some areas with significant flash. The other thing I noticed, a pet hate of
fubar57
I believe, is the thoughtless placement of sprue gates. The fuselage halves in particular have the gates in some really noticeable areas (the back of the fuselage spine for one) mean that a lot of very careful clean up is required before the main construction can occur. The cockpit pieces are pretty crisply molded, but some big mold seams and a short shot on one of the seat base supports have let the kit down a little. As is the case with every kit a little work in thinning pieces down a bit helps in making the cockpit look that little better.
While doing the clean up I noticed the fuselage had a slight twist so I thought it might be a worthwhile exercise to mock up the main construction pieces. This has revealed quite a few small issues with part/panel line alignment and some gaps in main joints that will need to be addressed in one way or another.
For the tailwheel and the wheel well the seams needed a significant amount of clean up (take a close look at the wheel yoke) and there are two really poorly placed ejection plugs on the well sidewalls. For the rudder pedals, the thick moulding (RHS in the photo) really benefits from thinning down (as seen on the LHS pedal).
I think that's about all I have time for tonight - hoping to add further updates in the next few days. The weather has turned pretty crappy down here, so it excuses me from other tasks that would take up possible modelling time. Lets hope that remains the case!
Thanks for looking in on my latest project.