Glad you are better, my friend @clipper! Great progress and fantastic diorama idea!

Fantastic job on both the pilot and the Fowler flaps, my friend @clipper The latter will look awesome once finished. Excellent scratch building skills as always!

I have to laugh at that pilot figure. My intended use for this kit is of course to display it in flight just as it is about to crash land. I am quite sure that if it were a real situation, the pilot would not have a smile on his face, but rather an intense look as he hoped he would survive the landing. So how do you change the look of a 1/48 scale pilots face without making him look like something from a Frankenstein movie! 🙂

You really know how to pick the challenging projects, Carl (@clipper). I am looking forward to following the rest of this build.

Hello everyone, I wasn't really looking for any help with the figure. It was actually a poor attempt at humor. Thanks for offering, however.

I've basically finished the pilot. He's not too bad. Most of the pilot figures I've done over the last year have been modified in some manner to fit in the cockpits. This has the effect of removing some of the subtle fabric folds in places. Combine that with the limitations of plastic molding, and the size of these figures, it gets pretty hard to improve my technique with these. I suppose what I might try doing next time is adding some folds back in using putty.

I wish that I had the room for 1/32 scale models as they would be easier to include well designed pilot figures in. To be honest, I do have some nicely sculpted resin figures in 1/48, but they are earmarked for other kit builds which I haven't gotten around to yet.

When I install the pilot, I will have to add PE seat and shoulder harnesses.

I am also continuing the work on the Fowler flaps. I had originally thought I Might use rods extending from the flaps and glued to the flap wells, however, the flaps are pretty thin and I didn't see this being anything but an exercise in frustration. So instead, I've added small strips of plastic to the flap well undersides for the flaps to be glued against.

Each flap will be super glued up against the strip. A flap track will be glued to each end of the flap and extend into the flap well. The plastic strips will not be visible once the model is mounted to the base. The flap tracks will be slightly visible from the top when looking at the model on the base, so that is why I am including them. But the flap tracks by themselves would be insufficient to hold the flaps in place because the bonding area on the flaps is too small.

You can kind of see it in the last picture, but I am also having to shim up the aileron wells. That's relatively easy to do with some plastic card and a bit of filler

Thanks Sprios (@fiveten). BTW, I responded to your PM as well.

Thanks John (@johnb). This is the first time I've done these types of flaps. It is an interesting experiment.

Today, I've gotten the aileron wells and ailerons fitted and shimmed, the pilot was given seat and shoulder harnesses and then installed in the cockpit, the PE instrument panel was installed, and then the remaining cockpit combing piece was installed. All seams have been filled and surface detail restored.

I have to look the model over and see if I am missing anything, but I know there is some PE external details that has to be added. However, I may prime the model first in case there are defects in the finish which need to be addressed. I'll add the ailerons after the prime check as well as the PE. The flaps will be installed later before I mount the aircraft to the base.