The fit of this kit blows me away, but with your help I'll work it out. I've spend some time on sanding and polishing rear bottom clear parts. Tamiya polishing compound to the rescue.

Next, after I've glued the tail, I've realized, that this "hole" would be visible through the big canopy windows, so I've added a wall.

In addition to a control stick, pedals and ribs.

And finally I've painted interior. There is no information about used colors, but in the movie it's visible, that it should be some light color, so I've chosen a neutral gray tone and dark brown for seats (I think it was a leather). Instrumental panel is in aluminum color. Clear parts were also painted from inside.

I was thinking about landing gear and snow. Looks like, that wheels was not a good choice for Arctic, taking into account not only snow surface, but also temperatures, and I've started thinking about skis. My friend gave me that parts from an old Yak-6 kit, so this should be my first model with skis, which is funny.

Dmitri, this is looking fantastic and I’m enjoying the narrative. Really unusual build and I’m pretty sure there’s only about 5% of the guys here that know the aircraft, so a LOT of interest.

And what the hell is that tool you are using and where can I buy one? Great piece of kit!

Love this.

Thank you, Peter - safely ordered from iModeler-enhanced Amazon.

Ha ha ha. I did exactly the same, including "profile", "ruler", etc. Then "profile gauge" finally revealed an image similar to your device. Anyway, I am glad that you showed us this simple handy tool.

I have a similar device as a novelty tool. Never considered it as a gauge.

You've expanded my knowledge with this build, Dmitry, Thank you!

Looking great! As to the profile gauge, I have one also I inherited when I bought out a modeler's stash and tools a few years ago. I've found multiple uses for it, particularly when I scratch built all the interior bulkhead pieces for the waist gunner positions on the Privateer. I LOVE finding new tools that solve very specific challenges. @dirtylittlefokker @tecko

Thank you for your attention and comments! I really appreciate that you've found my build thread interesting and helpful.

Slowly it goes. Currently model looks like this:

A lots of putty, and I'm still waiting for all of this to dry and shrink. In a meantime, I've assembled a resin M-11 engine by NeOmega – looks much better than the kit part (short run technology and a 1/72 air-cooled engine are not the best couple).

And the most unusual part of work is to draw a registration code. I'm far, far away from being a graphical designer, so slowly I'm learning how to use all of these splines and Bézier curves to replicate that 3 letters and 4 digits. I want to find a way to get a painting mask, so that's why I'm doing a vector image.