The undercarriage has now been attached and she's able to stand on her own three legs now. The wheels are all Ultracast resin ones bought some years ago as the kit only provided those horrid vinyl o-ring thingies. I was careful to get the ones with the hub covers as these seem to be prominent for the period. The main gear received a small rod for the brake fitting and the lead wire hose has been attached. These bits need to see a bit of touch up paint yet but the wheels themselves have been painted and weathered.
The nose leg was detailed with some lead wire representing the steering gear hydraulics and a towing eye, seen in red, and the resin wheel was weathered and installed. The radio antenna in the following pic was stolen from my old Tamiya Corsair kit which provided 3 different styles. The antenna matched exactly the scale dimensions for an AN-104 antenna but it just looked wrong when I compared it to period shots. I therefore removed this one and went with a shorter one (AN-74?) that looked much better.
One the tail, I dabbed some white paint into the inspection hatches to represent what I believe to be maintenance stickers, discussed in a separate thread.
Thanks again for following. Lots more to do yet but I should finally get this one done for the end of the month. Thanks again for your inerest,
Thanks again. Today I did work on the fiddley bits but first wanted to tackle the nacelle "mirrors". These were simply oval-shaped sections of the aluminum skin that were highly polished to enable the pilot to check on the landing gear position visually. To do this, I created two vinyl oval masks on my Cricut digital cutter and coloured the area in with a Molotov Chrome Pen.
I'm not too happy with the result as the chrome pen left a big ridge after I peeled the mask. Also, the surface is not very flat and so the mirror effect is not fully replicated. I need to let this fully dry and then see what I can do with it. The edges of the ovals will receive some darker olive drab where apparently the cleaner that the ground crews used prevented the underlying colour from fading. Note the reference detail here:
Next came the heavy lead-stained exhaust streaks:
The boarding ladder was then glued in place but it wasn't straight forward. The kit piece was designed to be inserted through slots that the builder has to cut but the handle doesn't protrude far enough out the top when the ladder is properly extended at the bottom. To fix that, I just snipped off the handle and made my own:
Finally, the elevator balance weights were glued in place. Hopefully these will still be there when the build is finished!