Man that s****r is soaking up the putty! I thought this would be relatively smooth sailing when you started this. Keep at it, George. It’s going to be well worth it in the end.

Thanks, Robert (@roofrat) and John (@j-healy).

I am glad to say that this build is done, but with an asterisk. I finished it and took the final photos, then discovered I had left off a landing light at the tip of the left engine nacelle. It is amazing how much you notice when you are looking at the photos prior to posting. I wanted to post the final part and then I will go back tomorrow and add the light.

I was planning to use a set of decals from Caracal Decals. This plane, being a night reconnaissance aircraft, had all of its marking in red. The red used by Caracal is dark, almost wine-colored, while the red used by the kit decals are a bright red similar to insignia red. I have seen several discussion recently in various model magazines about this very issue. The consensus of these discussions is that the lighter red color is probably more accurate. I personally suspect that they used paint on-hand to paint these planes, which would probably have been insignia red. I had decided to use the kit decals and their brighter red when I discovered that they weren't printed very well. Several of the edges on the red were a little fuzzy and indistinct, and they also looked very thick. Several of the kit decals also had a halo around the edges, as if they were printed over white to give them more density, and the red is slightly larger than the white undercolor. In the end, I decided to go with the darker Caracal set. These went on the plane without incident, and laid down well with some MicroSol and MicroSet.

After the decals had dried and I sprayed on a coat of Vallejo Flat Clear, I added all of the small bits that I didn't want knocked off while painting. Several antennas were added to the belly of the plane, as well as what looks like a pitot tube to the front of the nose near the windscreen. The coolest thing to be added was a windshield wiper that attached to the front of the windscreen.

Something interesting did happen at the end of the build. If you recall, I hadn't put enough weight in the nose and it ended up being a tail-sitter. Well, after I added the wheels, and gear doors, I found that the plane would just barely sit on all three wheels.

This was an interesting build, and I am glad to be done. I won't call it a fun build due to the several problems encountered, but it was interesting as a problem-solving opportunity. Now it's on to something more fun, perhaps something for the De Havilland group build, and I am part-way through a Jaguar for the Desert Storm Group. I hope you all stay safe. Cheers.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Congratulations, my friend @gblair!
You tackled a very difficult kit in excellence. I loved the problem solving parts or your build.

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten), Erik (@airbum), and Chuck (@uscusn). As far as the dark red goes, Erik, you are right. When I first saw the dark red on the sheet of decals, I thought it would be way too dark. After I put the decals on the black model, I think they look fine. I still don't don't know whether they actually used dark or light red, but I have no more all-black planes on the horizon, so life will go on. :o)