Then I started working on the cockpit conopy. Because I decided to make the E-3 variant I had to use the early cockpit conopy set. Of course the one for E-4 comes with the kit as well. Because the "glass" is "armour" type and not too smooth ( especially the windshield ) I had to clean the mess with sanding and polishing. When it was done I masked it with the Tamiya tape.
Having these parts of the cockpit conopy masked I started its painting with RLM02 as the first one. Also I removed the Mascol protection from the rear part of the conopy.
Of course the new trouble has appeared immediately. Look at these shots below. It appeared the windshield didn't fit to the fuselage because it went too deep into the cockpit hole.To make the matter worse , the whole set of the cockpit glass was too short. A 2mm gap in front of the windscreen can be noticed.It is really strange because the cockpit set for E-4 variant fits correctly.
"KM" I cursed in Polish and opened a can of T-stoff.
How annoying ! I seem to remember having a problem in that area with the instrument panel being too far back, into the cockpit, but the windscreen fitted OK.
If the voodoo is a 2mm wide strip of styrene, that's it.
First of all I added thin plastic bars to the bottom edges of the windshield. It caused the part went up slightly.It was enough to get the correct height of that. Secondly I cut off 2mm styrene strip and bended it going with the curvature of the front edge of the windshield and the rear one of the fuselage accordingly.
Then I stuck it with Superglue to the glassy part.
The next step was fitting of course.And certainly sanding was needed too. Because it would be difficult to attach the indicator panel with the gunsight later I did it at the stage. Finally I have achieved the effect you can see in pics below.