I second that 3D pilot. Looks like Jake 2.0 turned out pretty good. He has a boxers nose. However, his head is a lot better than the original George (@gblair).

Also,the spinner and prop combination is looking good. All of the color photos of the Flying Tigers show aircraft with DuPont Green. I have never come across photos showing red or yellow spinners. Yet, the history books and some of the Flying Tiger pilots have stated that they painted the spinners different colors to fool the Japanese into thinking that there were more squadrons in theater.

Hi, Bob (@v1pro), Spiros (@fiveten), John (@johnb), and Stephen (@stephen-w-towle): Thanks for stopping by. I had a set of markings for three of the P-40s at Pearl Harbor that I planned to use for this build, but I found some other good decals in my stash. I think it will be a game-time decision. Jake had some major surgery so that he would fit in the cockpit. His legs were way too long for the rudder pedals, so I chomped them off. He still isn't a great fit, so I think I will leave him loose so I can remove him without damaging anything.

Excellent progress and very nice tackling of the fit issues, my friend @gblair! Looking forward to the complete gluing of the wing to the fuselage.

Thanks for coming by, Spiros (@fiveten) and John (@johnb). I hadn't used rubber bands to hold things together in a long time. I think it was John who used them a while back on a model and they worked so efficiently that I wanted to try them again.

First time I have seen a model look like a stringed instrument. The pilot figure looks better with a primer and a coat of paint. George (@gblair) did the rubber bands return the wings to the proper dihedral?

Very good progress, George @gblair
That's indeed the same approach I use as well to get the wings on without a gap 🙂
Jake starts to look like a real pilot as well, nice painting.

I was at a place in the build where I thought I could paint the bottom of the plane. I sprayed the bottom with an initial layer of Tamiya Neutral Gray, then took the leftover paint and added some white and a bunch of thinner to create a slightly lighter shade. I sprayed this in random patterns along the line of airflow. I was looking for subtle, so it is a little hard to see.

Before I painted the top, I needed to get the glass installed. I started by painting the inset area behind the cockpit with an anonymous Tamiya dark drab color, then painted the fuel fillers red. It was time to add the glass. The kit clear parts were very clear, so I had high hopes for the glass. You have a choice of a one-piece canopy to cover everything, or the separate pieces that will allow an open canopy. This is where the trouble started. Clear plastic is always a little brittle, but this ancient glass was in the very brittle range. Apparently the years were not kind. All of the canopy pieces were attached to the sprue with very large attachment points. I wanted to be safe, so I planned to clip sprue for the one-piece canopy about 1/4" away from the canopy. When I clipped the sprue, it also took a sizable chunk out of the canopy. Totally unrepairable, so I switched to the movable canopy. Again, I wanted to play it safe, so I decided to use a micro-saw to remove the canopy from the sprue. What I should have done was cut the sprue away from the canopy, but I figured it was safe to cut next to the canopy. When I got done, I realized the saw was scoring the side windows of the movable canopy. 30 minutes of progressively finer sanding stick, followed by polishing with my T-shirt, then polishing with car polish, then a dip in Future. I think it is OK now. I will face the newly polished part tomorrow, as well as the rest of the glass tomorrow. Cheers.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.