Good stuff, Jaime. Beat to fit, paint to match!

The fuselage is now glued together. I had to add some more scrap plastic sheet under the cockpit floor to cover some gaps, and not knowing if this was going to be a tail sitter, I put some weight into the nose.

It took a fair amount of tube glue, half a mile of tape and a bunch of clamps to get everything together. Most of it came out ok, but the vertical fin fit was horrible and it leans to starboard a few degrees. There may be some heated persuasion and some new colorful four letter metaphors in my future. There is a gap between the back left edge of the cockpit tub and the fuselage big enough to drive a tank through, but I think some epoxy and microballoons will take care of that. The warp in wings came out when I glued them together, but they are still a bit twisted where the nose wheel well is. That will come out when the wings are glued to the fuselage. Fit here is surprisingly good with the added benefit of all the seams being pretty much along color separations! I'm debating whether to install the exhaust nozzles now while they are easier to work with. Stabilizer dry fit was terrible - going to have to work on that, too. Talk about beat to fit... :-O

And I seem to have misplaced the propeller...

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Jaime the propellers are in those tubes that go in the back end. I figure all your warping issues can be fixed bu Ulf's young rigger and his crane. Get him to pull your fin straight, then you can send in thr shimmer or the plasma welder and make thr change if if fo fit force it, if it breaks the part wad defective in the first place...lol
I shouldnt be tying type after I've take my sleep meds. TTYL
RICK

Pat in our club has built the Tamiya 1/32 version, which he converted to an RAF type. Apart from the (high) kit cost he invested a lot in aftermarket items, to the point where the investment was so significant he daren't stand down from what proved to be a difficult project. That said, it looks superb, but he still grimaces a little when talking about some parts of the build.

Keep at it!

Jaime, if I shared, you'd lose your medical, and more important, there wouldn't be enough for me...lol Not to mention the unwanted attention of various law enforcement agencies that are better left unprovoked;-)

I did the Weasel-version of this kit in 1984 or so 🙂 ! This makes me really tempted to try it again!

Regards

Magnus

Sorry to hear about your compressor going tits up mate.
As for the weather, that is some thing we cannot fix really.
Looking forward to seeing it finished.

It's been a while since I've been able to work on this one. Today is the first time in 8 days that the sun has been out and the temps have been above 45 degrees, so my climate controlled garage actually got to a nice toasty 53!

I was finally able to get all the seams filled after letting my tube of putty warm up for about half an hour on the black tonneau cover on my truck. After that, I assembled all the underwing stuff - a pair of ECM pods, two drop tanks and the centerline SUU gun pod. Fit was not good, so good old fashioned tube glue was used once again to hold things together. I used enough so the excess oozed out of the seams, which will make filling them much easier down the road. All the landing gear struts, actuators and wheels were painted on the sprues. Those were surprisingly nice, so minimal cleanup will be required.

The Phantom I'm modeling belonged to the 366th TFW based at Da Nang in early 1969. The Furball Gunfighters Part 1 decal sheet covers this group quite nicely, and the decals are well printed and of excellent quality. The only downside is that there are markings for more Phantoms than I will ever build!

The last shot is just a gee whiz with my other current model project, which is converting my RC MiG-29 park jet from a 72mhz radio to a 2.4G system. The wingspan on the MiG is about 28 inches. It was designed to be flown from smaller fields, such as baseball diamonds and schoolyards.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.