Okey dokey... some more work to report on. The last piece of cockpit fitting was the coaming piece that goes over the instrument panel. As I report on earlier, the resin coaming is designed to be a drop-fit replacement of the kit coaming and even comes with alignment pins to help slot it into place. However, the dreaded resin shrinkage has made this piece undersized. I don't have many positive experiences bending resin parts to I decided to see if I could perform some surgery and use the kit coaming, which fits much better.
The Academy plastic is on the softer side so that trimming easier. Using my Tamiya cutters as pruning shears and an X-acto knife to clean up the cuts, I removed the shroud over the instrument panel.
With a few more cuts, I was able to get the kit coaming to fit over the resin cockpit.
I wanted to salvage the instrument shelf that was molded integral to the resin coaming so I sawed it off.
I can place the shelf directly on the cockpit floor.
I used a piece of sheet styrene to bring the instrument panel outwards.
I threw in the armor panel, seat and control wheel just to see how everything fits.
Final verification to make sure the the instrument panel face fits behind the relocated instrument shelf... it looks like a go!
Almost time to paint! But I'd better attach the seatbelts first. I've tried to put some curvature into the belts to reduce that straight-as-piece-of-metal look.
Some of the little PE bits get glued on too. I like to dab white glue onto the ends of the PE switch gear to give the ends a round appearance.
After giving the cockpit pieces a black base, I sprayed the parts an interior green color (Tamiya NATO Green). I'm going to take my time and paint as much of the little resin details that my patience and eyes can stand. Here are the seat and the main cockpit parts about halfway through the painting stage.