Couple more pics coming up. All of the interior work is done and I'm getting ready to close this beast up. Everything that needs to be set inside is already inside except the top turrent which can be dropped into place later, the two side machine gun mounts which I am fitting in after everything is painted to avoid breaking off a gun barrel, the main canopy and the side doors.
Does anyone have a 3-color view of this plane? PARTICULARLY from the front. The wing attachment points are JUST a bit loose so it's a bit difficult to get the wing angles set properly particularly when I'm not sure if this plane should have a neutral or slightly positive dihedral. Either way there are going to be some gaps to fill. *sigh*
Impressive work Dwight. Sorry can't help you with the head on view but if you get a side view you can project the wingtips onto the fuselage to see what kind of dihedral this bird had.
Pic 1 is a shot of the two side gun mounts and the lower front turret Pics 2 and 3 are shots of the completed engine cowlings. For those of you that are interested in these things, the cowlings are painted with a Tamiya dark copper front ring, a Life Colour Borwn (Italian Brown Mimetico 3 iirc) main body, and a back ring of Gunze Sangyo Silver. The inside of the rear of the cowlings are painted Gunze Burnt Iron and the engines are painted Tamiya Gun Metal and drybrushed with Tamiya Flat Aluminum. The spinners are Gunze silver and the props are painted Polly scale flat black on the rear and Tamiya gunmetal on the front. The exhausts are currently burnt iron and will get a light coat of MM Acrylic Rust before they are added.
Since the cowlings are added as completely separate units, it wasn't an issue completely them in advance and putting them aside until after the wings are added and camo'ed.
PS: I managed to find some pre-cut Mr Hobby Masking strips in 1 and 2 mm widths that made masking off the cowlings a LOT easier. I definitely recommend those if you can find them.
This is a freehand first pass at the camo scheme. I did a rough first pass on the camo to make sure I got the area around the windows roughed in. It definitely gets a second coat later, but this was designed to minimize the amount of paint that actually gets on the masked windows. The less paint that gets oversprayed on the windows, the less pressure I need to remove what gets on it and the less chance of pushing too hard and popping a window inside. Btw, the windows all have at least two coats of MicroScale Liquid Mask on them. That should make taking the paint off a LITTLE easier.