With such a beautiful weekend for weather, I decided to grab this kit and a couple of tools and sacked out on the lounger outside to get a couple of parts together. As many of you know, the quality of the parts in this kit is impeccable, in many cases rivaling some good resin after market bits. After assembling as much of the cockpit as I dared before getting some paint splashed on, I took the pictures at the end of the post to demonstrate the detail provided.
I assembled the engine cylinder banks but did not take pictures. It was here that an odd problem with the kit showed itself, in that the locating pins fro the engine halves were incorrectly placed. The pins, if lines up with their holes, would have made the cylinders in the front bank in line with those in the back whereas they should be offset. An easy fix, it was off with the pins and the engine went together fine.
In the pics below, the ejector pin marks have not been removed as they are perfectly placed to be invisible after assembly. There was a locating pin error on the pilot's stick as well. Had the pin been used, the stick would have interfered with the seat and there would have been a gap between the boot and the metal flange. Once again it was off with the pin to make the fit work. Odd that this would happen but will keep me on my toes for the rest of the build.