Everything is legal as long as you don't get caught - Bob Dylan/Tom Petty
If the cops didn't see it, I didn't do it - George Carlin
Anyhoo....some pics. Revell has the antenna mast canted forward ala the early F6F-3 version. Just a matter of cutting it off, squaring it up and reattaching. There are two I.D. lights shown behind the mast, one was used on later versions of the -5 so once I relocate the reference I have, it will be removed.
There are a whack of these ejector marks on both sides impeding a good fit. Not so bad on this side but removing them on the right half was a pain as they were next to the locator pins. The fit was very good once they were removed.
The wing panels.....
...my plan is to remove the attachment points, square up the edges a bit better and then glue plastic card along the edges for a better bond. This probably won't happen before I go to camp so if anyone has a better or easy solution, feel free to chime in
Ready to seal this up. Cut the antenna from it's mounting lug, glued a piece of scrap plastic to the fuselage and then remounted the antenna in the correct upright position. The tail hook was meant to be operational but it stuck out about 6 scale inches so I cut it from its slide mechanism, glue some plastic to the fuselage and will glue the hook to this once the aircraft is painted.
Good stuff Geo - the rest of the build should go fairly quickly now. One thing I've noticed with most of the earlier Monogram / Revell kits, is that the fit of the main parts is quite good, even those like wings which fit over pins. My old Mitchell kit has gone together well overall,
Thanks guys. Just trying to figure out the best way to get the wings/landing gear through the fuselage and it looks like I'll use Glenn's method on the right side and just glue the left side in the down position. While test fitting the outer wing panels to their respected inner wing parts I tried to figure out how to deal with what looked like a slight pronounced dihedra. Off to the books and was shocked to see that there is a slight one...
Good stuff Geo, and yes, there's a noticeable dihedral, clearly seen in this shot of the former Duxford example (ex-Vracu aircraft) now back in the USA as of last year.
Nice. Not sure why I never noticed it before. Fuselage went together nicely with only some minor sanding. You may or may not notice that I've sanded down the 2" bolts or rivets as Revell would call them as well as the very pronounced ribs on the aircraft's moving parts
Also note the gimmicky landing gear. I'll see what it takes to upgrade them
Merci! Got the center wing section though without drama and I managed to install the control stick without dropping it into the cockpit. I'll need to run a bead of Milliput around the wing/fuselage join to tidy things up.