After fettling and sanding, taping, test fitting and retaping and convincing myself that the wings and fuselage really would fit together I settled down and started painting a few things...

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I like that phrase ‘convincing myself’. Every time I build a kit and the fuselage and wings are being dry fitted it sets the tone - is it going to be straightforward or require a lot of effort and time? Nothing wrong with the hard yards but always a sigh of relief if it looks to fit well! This is looking just great David! Even more excited now!

THE TEMPEST - ACT ii - THE UNDERCARRIAGE BAYS.

"Hell is empty and and all the devils are here" Ariel .

The assembly of the undercarriage bays is probably the single most important task in the assembly of this kit. Each bay consist of 6 individual strips. The strips do not interlock with each other in any secure way, but rather lean against one another while sitting in shallow indentations in the lower wing.

These all then need to be supported while being glued to the lower wing and to one another.

It's like erecting a pup tent, in a strong wind, on your own, 5 minutes before nightfall.

Once you start gluing, there isn't really any going back, like crossing some kind of modelling Rubicon.

Oh, and did you buy one of the early edition kits? You did , like mine the instructions transpose a couple of parts H21 and H33.

To be fair Special Hobby have corrected the instructions ( and can be got from their website) and the system does kind of work.

I was so grateful to have it all go together and to get the upper wing on - to use as a jig to ensure the pieces of the undercarriage bays were held in more or less the correct position, I neglected to take any photos of the process itself. My apologies - next time.

However step 29 of the instructions gives a fair idea of the process, the page on the left came with the kit and the next I downloaded from Special Hobby's site.

Although nerve wracking the process worked reasonably well.

I decided to tidy up the portside bay and removed this piece, carefully.

After cleaning it up and refitting this was the result.

We had a small uniform gap, easy to fill, probably hidden by the undercarriage doors.

Although we have a gap to the underside of the wing we now have a perfect fit to the upperside - and I am happier with the overall fit.

Personally, I think its like that some times, not all solutions are 100% perfect and some times you have to choose those problems you wish to fix and those you can live with.

I tried here to ensure most of all a good leading edge fit and to ensure the fuse wing fit would be good, any other issues could be handled in other ways.

The wing/fuse fit looks good - more to follow - thanks for sticking through it.

Finally, despite all the griping, this is a great kit, not one for the novice maybe but one that rewards a little care and patience massively.

Cheers David

Terrific work, David. That seat is stunning.

Hey David. This is one fantastic build journey. I just learned something about this plane after looking at the cockpit photos you posted.

I never realized that it had the rudder pedal floor troughs very similar to what you see on the earlier Hurricanes. This would make sense since both planes are Hawker designed.

Eduard is releasing an updated/modernized/accurized 1/48 Tempest V (they did one 20 years ago) this fall.

Thanks David@dirtylittlefokker. Like the rest of the kit there are times when you think that it will never fit together but it does, and mostly fits together beautifully. Paints used were MRP cockpit green and Humbrol enamels for all the other details.

Paul@yellow10, when researching on line for this project bits and pieces from Shakespeares Tempest kept on coming up and that quote seemed apt at the time!

Louis@lgardner many thanks. Sydney Camm the designer seems like the kind of guy that didn't bother reinventing the wheel if he didn't have to. The Hurricane itself was basically half a Hawker Hart !

Tom@tcinla thanks for that, I think I must have one of those!

Thanks to all for their kind support.

The instrument panel build up nicely with nice raised detail. the intruments are from the kits decals.

I cut out the individual decals and applied them, the photo is not that great.

The next step was to fit the cockpit cage to the fuselage.

The test fit revealed a little fettling was needed on the front bulkheads to get a secure fit.

The fit was then right ... and with the help of some Tamiya thin.

Add the instrument panel and ... the cockpit was done.

1 additional image. Click to enlarge.