Patience my friend....Before I get there, I have another question. Would the black walkway boundary leading out to the wing tip have been painted over by the white recognition band or would the stenciling have been replaced after the white was painted on? My thought is that if the white markings were added at the MU along with the Dark Earth paint, then the stenciling would have been re-applied. If at the squadron level, they would have been overpainted. Thoughts?
In the meantime, I decided to tackle the tail wheel so that I would not keep scuffing the paint at the back end. Pic 1 is the tail wheel as supplied with the kit, which represents the fixed tail wheel in the earlier models. With the VIII having a retractable wheel, the wheel assembly had to be modified. Pic 2 shows the modified tail wheel, which I did by simply cutting the slight crank off the strut and filing the cross section round. An oleo cuff was added with Tamiya tape and the whole thing painted and washed.
Pic 3 shows the kit supplied tail wheel doors substantially thinned by scraping and filing and the final pic reveals the finished assembly.
Thanks for looking in and I look forward to your thoughts on the stencil over the white.