Made progress on the build this week. The fuselage is together. I had completed the resin cockpit during the first build attempt, but I now found I had lost some pieces. The armored head rest had broken off and lost along with the control stick. I made a new head rest from sheet plastic and found a reasonable facsimile control stick in the spares box. I inserted a brass rod through the fuselage for a wing spar and bent it up 3 degrees for the correct dihedral. I did something similar for the 10 degree tail plane.
Then I realized I was missing the wheels and one main gear strut. The kit box is a flimsy end-opening type and parts can easily fall out. I’m sure I put these pieces in a safe place – someday I’m sure I’m find that place and the parts, again.
In the meantime, I needed to build a new gear or abandon the build all together. I took an aluminum tube that was about the same diameter as the remaining kit gear. I flattened the end with a pair of pliers and the bent it to match the kit part. I cut the upper strut apart and inserted a smaller brass rod for the oleo strut. The collars are Tamiya thin tape, wrapped around the shaft several time and coated with super glue to seal them.
I decided that a matched pair would look better so I built a second one. Things were going so well, I moved on to the nose gear and modified it as well.
Finally, I was ready to tackle the wings. I had already cut out the wings from the vac-u-form sheet and sanded them down. I discovered that the root cord was shorter than the kit wings and the wing tips did not look right either.
Measuring twice, then cut the trailing edges of the kit wings (it was the center and leading edge that I had destroyed previously). I cut the vac wings at the rear spar line and mated the two pieces. The wings now match the attached outline on the kit fuselage.
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
