I checked out the fit of the canopy and it seams Ok so that's one less thing I have to worry about. I'm in the middle of a 4 day weekend so I hope to get a lot done. Next thing to work on is the instrument panel. George gave me a good idea for it that I'm using.
George sent me a diagram of a D-1 control panel that I shrunk down and glued to a new panel made out of two pieces of sheet plastic and here is the result.
Cockpit finished and installed in the fuselage sides
Fuselage halves glued together, wings glued together and wings test fitted to fuselage. Everything fits real good so far. doesn't look like I need will need any filler yet.
Yep.. looking great. However if it is going to be the Black 9+N the exhaust pipes should be of the late variant looking similar to these of the Bf 109E. And this is the main difference in the external appearance between the C and D-1 ( especially the late one ) version.
Well, I'm not going to change the exhaust now. I'll look through my decal cash and see what I can come up with. If I can find some 4s, 5s or 10s I can do the ones in the backgrounds of these pictures.
I'm afraid all of them had the late pipes installed. However I might be wrong. The number 4 and 10 look like there was the black strip painted for the early pipes too.
I have enlarged the Black 10 and I would say the exhaust pipes were of the late style. It can be noticed that the black strip there is of quite lumpy structure what may indicate the large flat endings of the pipes. Those small amost rounded ones were protruding barely from the fuselage and usually can't be noticed from a such distance especially if painted black..
I'm pretty much set on doing it in this basic paint scheme. I have a lot of left over Luftwaffe decals, but all I could find was a couple of black 4s, but the numbers I need have a white outline. I do have a pair of yellow 3s with a black outline like the 18 in the profile below from the kits decal sheet. I'm thinking of going with that using the logic that it there was a yellow 18, there must have also been a yellow 3. Either that or just go with the N+9 decals and accept the fact that the exhaust stubs are incorrect.