Connection to this site has been dodgy for me the past couple of days. Anyone else having access issues?
Working on a few more things before the main assembly of wings to fuselage. The fuselage halves have been glued together and the top gun cowling added. The fit has been very good on this Hobby Boss kit... very impressed.
The front cowling is one piece with the intake details molded in. Not the finest detail but adequate. After painting, the front end is masked using a circular piece of masking tape.
The headrest is painted and the canopy masks applied. I used Montex masks on this kit... not as good as Eduard in terms of fit and adherence. I had to augment the masks using pieces of Tamiya tape.
The tail rudder, ailerons and flaps are separate pieces. Some ejector marks need to be cleaned up if the flaps are to be shown in the lowered position.
Dry-fitting the wings to the fuselage shows the detail I added to the engine plug as well as the opening of the 2nd ammo chute. Pretty sloppy work but that's the best I could manage with the tools that I have. You can also see that the ammo ejection openings look straight up into the wheel wells.
In order to limit the view through the ammo openings, I decided to add ejector chutes using pieces of plastic sheet. These will be added after all of the painting is completed.
And finally, the ETC rack.