Went golfing this morning and had to quit after 11 holes as my back was getting really sore. So Plan B was to work on the Tank and i got a fair bit done, including the finish (finally!) of the nasty seam on the gun access cover. I'm now satisfied that this will not get any better than it now is so onward and upward....Here's how these look now:
The port side was completed and I managed to not damage the molded hinge. A PE flange was added behind the access panel per the instructions.
On the other side, this one took a lot more work as, in addition to having to fill the seam, I had to get rid of a step between the wing root fairing and the upper surface of the wing at the seam. In doing so, I pretty much obliterated the molded hinge so I replaced it with a length of stretched sprue.
So, now that that mess was behind me, I got on with the nose section. The Dragon kit provides a pretty basic nose cowl that does nothing to represent the unique radiator set up in this aircraft so, being the sucker I am for details, I set about making the cylindrical radiator sections from scratch. This was relatively simple. I started with a 5 mm wide strip of styrene sheet and cut some lines in with a blade and straight edge. I then cut 4 sections and rolled them into a circular form.
The 4 sections were then CA glued in place.
On the opposite side, I drilled some holes to receive some pieces of stretched sprue to represent the cowl flap actuators.
These were then carefully snipped to length by checking against the nose section and then both parts were painted RLM 02 and a dark aluminum over the rad sections.
The nose section was then glued on and a final check of the actuators shows a good fit. Actually, I just noticed that I must have broke one so I'll need to replace it.
That's it for now guys. I'm now suddenly at the point when I can start laying some paint down so will have to decide on a final scheme now. It's down to White 7 or Green 4 and a coin flip may decide it.