Now that the Foreign Service group build is done I spent smoothing out the joints on the 'E'. It took much less filler than I had expected with a model this old, just a dab or two. I also coated the clear parts with Future and will be adding them to the fuselage next.
Glued on the clear parts. The fit was not too bad except for the small side windows which I will make with white glue and the dorsal window which did not fit at all and had to be resized and reshaped.(sorry no picture, maybe later)
Also glued on the horizontal tail surfaces. Again, not a bad fit
Now for the bad fit. The engine cowls were awful. I struggled putting these together for the better part of an hour to end up with this mess. I cant see how back in the day a 10 to 12 year old kit could get these parts together and end up looking like anything but a mess. I did manage to make them look pretty good after a whole lot of sanding and filling.
Glued the wings on both the "E" and the "Z" and here's what it looks like at present.
After the wing was glued on, I attached vertical tail fins and the clear parts. I usually hold off on the guns until later but here, that would have meant cutting off the barrels, installing the breaches and than gluing the barrels back on at a later time, so I decided to just go ahead and install them and hope for the best. I managed to get the masking on the nose and dorsal windows without breaking any off, but it's still early.
Great progress and well done on that lousy engine fit. Good luck with the gun barrels! I find I can't trust myself to remember anymore that things like that are sticking out.
Just a quick update.
I was getting ready to attach the canopy when I saw that the gins had to be attached first just like on the 'Z' so I decided to try something different to prevent breaking off the barrels. as a trial with the two guns at the rear of the canopy, I cut off the barrels and drilled small holes in both the barrels and the receivers and glued fine brass rods into the barrels. The receivers will be glued to the inside of the canopy and the barrels added later at the end of the build. Now I have to do this with the rest of the guns because they all have to be installed before the clear parts.