Thanks for looking in Jeff.
With my Ar196 curing in the paint shop and snow blowing outside, I sat down and made a big dent in this build. The cockpit parts were sprayed a dark grey while on the sprue to serve as a base for the RLM 66 to come.
The cockpit tub on the Hasegawa kit is placed into the fuselage from below after the halves are glued together so this allows one to progress on multiple fronts. Here, the tub has received a thin coat of RLM 66 over the dark grey and the high edges of the parts received a brushed application of RAF Ocean Grey to make them stand out. The cover for the cannon butt was glued in as were the pedals and all areas got some chipping treatment using a silver pencil. I'm going to pose the canopy in the closed position on this build so am not going to go to infinite detail in the pit, though the prominent yellow fuel line on the starboard side will be added as this was highly visible.
Hasegawa's 109's are fairly generic and modifications are needed depending on which variant is being built. The circular wheel wells, typical of the F models, need to be squared off but this is not a problem as the walls provided serve as a guide. The overhangs were simply removed with a sharp scalpel.
The G-14 also has an extra panel line that needs to be scribed in and this is noted in the instructions. I verified the location of the line against drawings that John sent me and scribed it in. Here you see the location marked with a pen and the line after I finished scribing it. The scribing was accomplished by laying a flexible straight edge on the surface and holding it there whilst making a couple of passes with a scalpel, sanding down the plastic that got pushed up, then going over it again with a photo-etched saw to clean out the plastic. Once the line was equivalent in size to the adjacent ones, I sanded once again, cleaned with a wetted tooth brush, and then ran some Tamiya Extra Thin Cement down the line to dull the edges a bit.
The radiators were installed and painted with Alclad Steel and the various holes need for the antenna spike, wheel recess bulges and the ETC rack were drilled out. The bulges were then glued in place and the wings were glued together before I called it a night.
The fuselage and wings come together beautifully and are held together easily with firm hand pressure for maybe 10 seconds after the Extra Thin is applied. What appears to be some separation between the wing uppers and lowers at the starboard wing root is actually just the way the light is catching a small step that will be sanded out.
At this point, I will look closely at other panel lines and hatch covers that might need to be added or filled before going further. Of course, I should have done this before the fuselage was glued together but it didn't occur to me at the time.
I expect that I will be able to spend some quality time with this kit before Saturday as we're supposed to get non-stop snow today and tomorrow. Thanks for looking in and for your interest guys.