Good, solid decision to leave the doors, my friend @clipper.

Your scratchbuilding is reaching new levels, Carl (@clipper). The work on the gear and gear doors looks awesome, and is some of the more complex scratchbuilding I have seen. As far as the gear doors on the original, you have to figure that it had all the gear doors installed at some point in its life. I think you are safe leaving them on.

Hi Carl (@clipper):
I have seen some photos and color diagrams of RAF Mohawks used in the Far East that have the Green/Gray scheme. I don't know if these are the right variant for yours, but perhaps a possibility?

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Deciding which scheme to aim for is always difficult, Carl @clipper

Okay, I have enough paintwork on the sub assemblies done to show a photo now.

Landing gear main struts: Most of the doors have been pre-installed on the assembly. Only the small scallop door for the leading edge hump will be installed later after the gear is installed on the airplane. The wheels are also painted and will be installed later since they are slightly flattened to simulate weight and I need to make sure they are in the correct orientation to the aircraft.

Propeller: The kit propeller has a smaller and different spinner than that used on the Mohawk IV. It was an easy modification to add the larger pointy cylinder used instead. I had a leftover part from my previous Hawk 75 build that was used for this.

Windscreen (and other clear parts): The Mohawk IV used by the RAF in Burma has a rather large rear view mirror attached to the upper right side corner of the windshield. I duplicated this with a piece of styrene plastic and glued it to the windscreen. All of the clear parts were masked inside and out and then sprayed on the inside with the interior green used elsewhere in the cockpit.

The windscreen is thoughtfully molded with a portion of the forward fuselage which will make cleaning up the seam easy. The part fits excellently anyway so there won't be much clean up needed. But before installing it, I needed to add a gun sight which is not included in the kit. I have some RAF gyroscopic gun sights from Quickboost which may or may not be the correct sight, but look the part. I painted one of these up and dry brushed it. It has a small piece of clear acetate for the reflector. I had to make and install a small bracket to the instrument panel for the gun sight to set on. It had to extend far enough to clear the windscreen. This was made from a small bit of plastic and glued in place, then painted. The gun sight was glued to that. Once the glue has dried sufficiently, I will install the windscreen.

The aft part of the canopy is comprised of two elongated scalloped clear parts that fit over the rear fuselage. In addition to painting the interior frame work with the interior green, I painted the area that these would be covering and did some mild weathering. There is a gas filler cap on the port side under the clear part that was given a slight fuel stain.

Once the windscreen is finished, I have a bit more detail work to do on the main air frame (including those louvers on the cowling that I experimented with a couple of months ago). Then I can start painting.

Looks great, Carl (@clipper). You are right about having some fuselage as part of the canopy section. I always worry when there is some blending to do between the windscreen and the fuselage when there isn't any extra plastic on the windscreen. You are trying to fill and sand within the width of a canopy frame, and it sometimes doesn't go so well. It must really be a milestone in this build to be finally nearing the paint booth.

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten), George (@gblair), and John (@johnb).

Yes, trying to blend in windscreens that do not have the forward fuselage molded as part of them is good for nothing except practicing control of sanding! And perhaps practicing clear part restoration. 🙂

John, I meant to take a close up of the gun sight before installing the windscreen but neglected to. The best I can do at this point are the following images.