Thanks guys!
Very nice additions John, the 262 aircraft model is certainly one that lays itself open for detailing.
Can I ask what paint and colour you used for the tyre!
I make a dark gray for my rubber tires using a mix of Tamiya RLM Gray and Tamiya Black. My mixtures (approx. 1:1) are not exact or constant for this and it will vary from tire to tire.
On with the Nightfighter! The wiring in the wheel wells were capped off with a random rectangular piece from the spares box. On the other side, I used pieces of lead wire to dress up the fixtures a little bit. I get a little frustrated working with CA glue. Sometimes its hard to get things to stick, especially on painted surfaces. Is that why most people do their wiring prior to painting? Even then, I had some trouble getting some of the wires to lay down and I had to clean up some mess left over by the excess CA glue.
The wheel well was primed with gloss black and then shot with Alclad Dark Aluminum.
I've decided to show the wheels wells in a combination of natural metal and RLM 02 Gray so I masked off a portion of the wheel well and shot it with gray. I've also elected to show the electrical wiring as light gray instead of the yellow that the restored 262 at NASM shows. A pastel wash is applied to bring out the recessed detail and to dirty up the innards. As a finishing touch, I shot some super-thinned black along the rivet lines and seams.
Some components of the wheel well bulkheads were painted in RLM 02 Gray and given a pastel wash.
The rear wheel well bulkhead is cemented in place.
The forward wheel well bulkhead is secured. This closes off much of the wheel well but things will still be somewhat visible.
The upper wings have a bit of wheel well so they were sprayed with RLM 02 Gray with details picked out by handbrushing.
Deviating from the norm (but following the kit instructions) the lower wings were attached to the fuselage prior to the attachment of the upper wings. Fit was VERY tight and I had to do some minor trimming of the bulkheads to make sure the lower wing laid down properly.
Here is a closeup of the upper fuselage to show the removal of the top seam. The oval fuel fill ports were filled in with Mr Surfacer 1000 and rescribed using templates.
The nose cowling is comprised of multiple parts to allow the modeler to show the cannon bay. I prefit the panels to check alignment and it seem fairly good. Keep in mind that this is all held together by gravity and friction alone... no tape! The middle piece that represents the gun cowl hinges appears to be a little too narrow so I may need to replace it with some sheet.
It's almost impossible to gauge exactly what is needed with all of the loose parts so I am going to start by securing the best fitting panel first and working from there.
More prefitting with a piece of sheet styrene replacing the kit piece.
That piece of sheet is going to need some sculpting to make it fit properly so I decided to stop here for a while and take a break for lunch.