so here are the progress shots so far. ive opted to pant the fuselage and lower wings assembled. The struts, U/C and wheels are also painted (still finishing the struts), and the upper wing whilst it is still separated from the main body. I have to do it that way because the rigging has to be put in before the upper wing is fixed into position.
I also scratch built the ammunition extraction chutes (I think that's what they are called) just behind the cowl. It was tricky. I didn't really have any appropriate box section materials, so I had to change (ne panel beat) some right diameter round aluminium into a correct box profile, using a mixture of filing and reshaping and also using a solid square section dolly which I pushed into the pipe aperture. I basically beat the pipe around that template to get the square shape I was after. Then I went onto adjusting the size of the aperture in the fuselage so the two elements fitted. Even so, at fitting, filling was required to fill small gaps I used green goo for this and than painting
Ive had somewhat of a computer disaster. I use an old SLR digital camera to take the shots before transferring them onto my external hard drive. Cannot transfer directly to my PC because the transfer cable doesn't fit. Yesterday my HD decided to cr*p itself. Ive lost all my data files for this build and all the progress shots as well, but worse, my data transfer method has had to be changed and for some shots I was using a much inferior digital with no capacity for close up photography (that's the main reason for using the older digital that have, along with the fact that its overall lense produces better images. Not everything old is cr*p....
Anyway here are the progress shots as they are
The ammunition extraction chute is in place
The colour I settled for the doped underside. Its a mix of Tamiya Deck Tan and Desert Yellow, which found was an okay result.
Bad photo using the cr*p camera of the still unfinished support struts. in the flesh they are pretty good with nice woodgrain effects
Undercarriage, same problem as above
wheels, same problem with the photography as the previous two shots
I will try and solve the imaging problem I now have before the next round of shots. but overall progressing fairly well now