I made a very limited start on this kit a week ago but got some more done last night so it's time to get going with some pics.
I started in the cockpit - surprise, surprise. Oddly, Trumpeter have moulded the pit with dual controls so the first order of business was to lop off the second control column and the floor extension that picks up the right-hand rudder pedals.
Here we have the modified floor and single control column glued to the section that supports the w/o and navigator's area. The seat for the pilot is quite nice but those for the other two positions aren't quite right. Rather than fuss over those though, I'll leave them be as all that will be seen through the glazing is a fuzzy representation anyway. In the below pic, I have left the slot that supports the instrument panel but more on that later.
The topic of the kit instrument panel was discussed at length in Jeff's build thread. Just to recap, Trumpeter have chosen to mould the entire panel face in clear plastic so that the instrument glass faces can reveal the dials behind them. These are printed on a clear film which is supposed to be pinched between the clear face and another grey part in behind. The latter part contains the tongue that fits into the slot on the cockpit floor mentioned above
After realizing that the instruments on the clear film would need the grey part to be painted white to bring out the details, I opted to go down a different path. The main reason for this decision was not having to paint that part white but that the detail provided is not quite correct in that the panel does not extend to the floor. Rather, there was space under the center console and this was taken up by an underslung compass which Trumpeter have ignored. (Note: Terry's pics in Jeff's thread along with others found online were very useful in this regard.) I therefore opted to discard the grey plastic part and pinched the clear film between the IP face and a new piece of white sheet styrene as seen below.
Flipping the assembly over reveals a rather unconvincing looking instrument panel. Of course the face still needs to be painted but the disadvantage of the clear panel is that you can't spray the thing black without masking every instrument face. The alternative is to brush-paint the whole thing, taking care not to get paint on the instrument faces. I chose the latter option as I didn't want to fiddle with tiny masks, nor did I want to go out and buy a bottle of liquid mask, something I've never used before.
Here we have the panel painted Tamiya Rubber Black using a very fine brush and things are looking much better now. I thinned the paint down a fair amount and allowed it to run up to the raised instrument faces. More importantly, you can see that I lopped off the bottom of the console and scratch-built a compass. The discarded grey part can be seen underneath the assembly.
All of this now means that the IP will need to be glued to one of the fuselage halves rather than to the floor, a small price to pay for a more realistic result in my opinion. As this area will be easily seen through the beautifully clear canopy glazing, I wanted to get it right. This also means that the slot moulded into the floor, shown in the second pic, can be removed.
Thanks for checking in and, as always, comments are welcome.