Thanks for that detail explanation about liquid masking. I'll have to give the Micro Mask a good test one of these days so I can actually use the stuff.
Some more progress on the Erla to report. The bigger scale makes some things easier (more room, larger parts) but slows things down too (more parts, more joints, glue seams stand out more). Regret from not using some of the Alley Cat parts caused me to look at the prop assembly. The kit blades are nice and thin but the twist on them looks a little exaggerated to me.
So I decided to use the Alley Cat blades on the kit spinner. The Alley Cat mounting pin is thicker so I had to enlarge the mounting holes in the spinner using a drill. The Alley Cat blades are obviously thicker. They have been extensively thinned already but could perhaps use a little more shaving down.
Here are the blades temporarily inserted into the spinner.
Moving on the modular wing assembly. Oh, I hate that word... modular. Revell has decided to complicate this kit by abandoning the standard three-piece wing assembly. Not including the internal wheel well bits and control surfaces (which are all separate BTW), the wings are made up of eight pieces, four to a side. It's a bit maddening... not only is the bottom wing split into left and right pieces but the wings themselves are split further into inner and outer panels. Anyway... the modular construction of wings makes pre-planning and pre-fitting essential. Wiring was added to the wheel well in a couple of spots.
Wheel wells are executed well with detail imprinted on the inside of the upper wings and everything boxed in with little bulkheads. The wing radiators have inserts for the grills. Every thing was painted and weathered before assembly.
The upper wings were attached to the fuselage. Fit is nice and solid. Not Tamiya-perfect but very good with no noticeable gaps. You can see the mounting panel for the individual exhaust pipes that I've superglued into the fuselage. You have to make sure this piece is solidly attached as you do not want it to come undone when pushing in the exhaust pipes.
Cowling is attached. Again fit is good. No gaps but all of these glue seams will be very visible and need to be cleaned up. The cowling joint is not on a panel line so it needs to be puttied. But the panel line runs a couple of millimeters above the joint... I see no possible way of preserving the panel lines so close to the joint so some puttying and rescribing will be necessary.
The outer wings are attached to the inner wings. Again, fit is very good with no gaps. The joint corresponds to a panel line but due to the sloppiness of a glued connection, I am going to putty things smooth and re-scribe.
This modular approach extends even to the tail. I can see this being of use in the G-6 kit where the option of the tall tail vs short tail exists but I don't think any Erla G-10's had a short tail. The rudder is designed to be movable but I am going to clip those vertical pins and just glue the rudder in a fixed position.
Beginning the putty work on the wing joints. This is the initial application of Mr. Surfacer 500. Note that there is no putty on the cowling yet. I like to work in sections instead of puttying up the entire plane in one go. That allows me to focus more and avoid missing spots.
First application of Mr. Surfacer 500 is sanded, inspected and touched up with dabs of Mr. Surfacer 1000. First coat of Mr. Surfacer 500 is applied to the port cowling joint. I've purposefully left off from the starboard cowling joint because of some particular issues that I want to look at.
The starboard cowling joint had a little step near the windscreen opening. The joint also runs right through a round access hatch. Is there a way to preserve that detail? I can't see any so I'm going to sand everything down and try to rescribe the hatch later.
Clean up work will continue slowly. I will probably shift over to my MiG-3 over in the Allied Aircraft GB when it arrives so I'll have two projects running simultaneously.