@lgardner
Yes Louis, that’s our old friend Dragon’s 188, still unfinished and tucked inside the box. In fact my bench back space lodges 3 boxes, all (let’s call them) ongoing projects and one Bf 110 also “ongoing” dating back from the sharkmouth GB.
I guess I have issues Lol
And thank you for the kind words on the Tempest!

@holzhamer - Eric @eb801 isn't referring to the "old" and "new" Eduard Tempests, but to the currently-produced kits, which have an option of an "early" configuration without the opening ahead of the cockpit for the "later" trop version, or the "late" version.

As to the cockpit, the parts are definitely fragile, for those planning to do this kit, clip the parts off the sprues, then cut the sprue nibs off. If you try to cut them off the sprues breakage is GUARANTEED.

@fiveten Thanks Spiros!

@johnb Its not that the effort I put painting the cockpit was less that usual, but you know that feeling that once you made it feels that it could be better but you can’t really understand why? Thanks for the nice feedback my friend

@tcinla Yes, that was the notion of my answer, but despite the box parts of all their 3 Tempest II kits having both smooth and open grill parts in it, Eduard calls the first box “Early” -the one I have here- and the second one “Late”.

As for the delicacy of the cockpit tubular structure your advice is spot on, care is needed when cutting them free from the spruces but unfortunately I managed to broke mine while assembling them to the firewall, therefore my extra warning to people that may be more clumsy like myself eheh

Your office space looks terrific Pedro @holzhamer. If you think the Eduard tubular cockpit parts are fragile, wait until you try building Hasegawa's Typhoon cockpit which I'm am currently putting together as part of this group build. I think I broke and repaired the frames several times over now and they make the Eduard parts seem vastly superior. Once again, you can't see all that much once the fuselage is closed up on both kits. I'm on the home stretch with my Tempest II build. All painted and now I'm in the middle of decaling it.

Unfortunately, Eduard's kit decals are not so great, at least the ones that came with my Tempest kit. They are too thin and not as opaque they should be. Hold a black decal up to the light once you've removed it from the backing sheet. You can see right through it. The red stencils are awful, almost useless and I worry about the yellow ones. On my decal sheet, the black stencils are over printed and mushy looking. The carrier film is way overdone but seems to settle down when all is said and done. Be careful and don't soak them too long or the smaller ones will curl up on you. Very disappointing.

I've been trying to figure out where the thin, almost invisible brake lines run down the Tempest gear legs and finally spotted them on a current restoration photo. It also showed the wheel well in painted in that grey-green color. But as we know, restorations are sometimes not totally accurate.

Far as I can as I can tell, the main difference between the "early" configuration vs "late" is that the late model had hard points for bombs, rockets and gas tanks plus changed out the hard antenna mast for a whip.

Your Tempest build looks great and is really moving along, Pedro (@holzhamer). I am just now catching up to your build. Sorry about the poor kit decals, but there are a lot of aftermarket decals floating around. Your interior looks awesome. I always worry about getting color information from a restoration. Most restorations do their homework and get the colors correct, but some don't. Looking forward to the rest of the build.

Afternoon everyone!

The basic structure of this build is now done, just a few sanding spots and some minor panel lines/rivets to rescribe. The assembly was trouble free with a superb airtight fit of parts.
Next comes the sky fuselage band, yellow wing edges stripes and the exhaust panel area.
Still waiting for new brassin hollow exausts to arrive, but that will be the last detail to add.
Now this reminds me that I reinforced the “sitting” points where those parts are to be adjusted in. Eduard has one of the sides poorly casted so it would be difficult to get the piece in position without some luck and ability not to spoil the surroundings.

All looking great from here as well, my friend @holzhamer!

Can’t argue with that Martin @editor 😉
I’m a big fan of Eduard way of making kits (let’s call it this way). Each of their newest kit seems to surpass the previous in specific aspects, and what you get in the box is bang for the money spent.
Still, the tubular fame of the Tempest kit is quite fragile to handle, but the blame for breaking it twice is all on me.

Haven’t post any updates here for 2 reasons: 1- lazinesses in taking photos and 2- bad indoor lights has been a real handicap. Hopefully within days this will change