Canopies Masked!

As you can see, I am darting around assembling things in advance of installing everything. The canopies are now masked and ready for paint thanks to Eduard's mask set which makes life a lot easier.

I also jumped ahead and painted the Armory resin wheels. I'm not sure if I like these or not. Seems the molded hubcaps and wheels are slightly off center. Although these are not sagged, the tread is fantastic and they sure beat the old True Details flat looking tires. A bit more touch up is needed.

Taking a cue from TC @tcinla, I dressed up the gunner's cockpit with some imaginary side wall details to cover up the noticeable wing insert indents. Also added the rear oval fuselage windows.


And I prepped and painted the props.

Thanks for stopping by.

Nice preperations, Eric @eb801
Canopy masks are indeed a great relief.
Indeed nice extra work done on the interior.
Personally I would say that those wheels don't look that bad.

Eric, looking great in the progress department. I say go for it with the life raft, and have fun. I added a simple painted putty example to my A-20G, and in some of my pics, you can see it clearly visible through the greenhouse. Yours will look better than mine, I have no doubt. 😉

@pb_legend - I guess I will make a life raft after all. Thanks for the encouragement, John (and @johnb too!). J.H: I have been regularly looking at your A-20G for reference - especially the cockpit. Once again, what did you make your life raft out of? Was it bake lite clay or something similiar?

Great progress, my friend @eb801! The Vector resins are absolutely gorgeous, a big departure from the kit offerings. Looking forward to your next steps, life raft included!

@pb_legend - You're right. The cockpit does need a little something behind the pilot's seat. I'm going to look a little closer to see if the C model had anything back there. There are so many variations of the early A-20 models including the C model it's difficult to decide which way to go. I was even thinking of doing the DB-7C version. I purchased a Red Roo Models tropical cowl kit with the corrected outer exhaust nacelles but the resin nacelle halves seem out of wack and don't line up so I am on the fence about using them. I'm in touch with Red Roo trying to determine why they don't fit as advertised. I'm going to have to make a decision soon or come to a temporary halt.

Fabric Ailerons Attached

First I assembled and glued the wings together and the removed the flat metal looking kit ailerons which was a bit of a chore as the styrene is a bit thick here. A good old no. 11 blade took care of it, with careful scoring.

I replaced them with the much better looking resin Vector "fabric" ailerons and sanded them a bit to get the trailing contour just right. A coat of paint will make the "fabric" pop. Kind of hard to see the definition in this photo.

Indeed a big improvement on those ailerons, Eric @eb801.