The good - the resin cameras arrived from Barracuda earlier this week. They are as nice as advertized and I think they'll make a good addition to this model.

The bad - while waiting for the cameras to arrive, I started working on the wings. I'm doing the wings extended, so am using the one piece lower wing. I don't know if it was from being in storage for so long or if it was molded that way, but both tips on the lower wing were curled upwards quite a bit on the sprues. There was also no dihedral at all. I dry fitted the upper wings, which helped a bit. Fit to the fuselage is pretty bad, but it looks like I'll be able to get the dihedral back by closing the gaps between the wing and fuselage. The gull section of the lower wing looks good, but doesn't fit well to the fuselage either.

The ugly - there are some pretty serious sink marks on the back side of the contra prop blades that will need to be filled in. The ones for the five blade prop were just fine.

The joys of model building...

Hey Jaime,
Here are a few photos showing the screwed up wing dihedral and wrong interior color. Like I said live and learn. BTW, so far, the MK 22/24 Airfix kit I'm working on doesn't seem to have the same fit problems...
Best,
Erich

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Like Erich I have been following your build, I got mine finished but have not posted it yet,will try to get it done soon and will welcome your opinion, just as a tip be careful with the decals for the landing gear covers as they are "handed" it took me a while to get them right but if I had paid proper attention to the numbers given on the instruction sheet I would have avoided the bother.

N.

P.S. if you are going to use the resin camera bay why not think about having the hatch open it might look pretty cool.

Sorry to be so long away. Haven't really done much to the model in the past few weeks, just have had a lot of things going on and now we're upon the holidays.

I had the lower wing on the bench - both tips were curled upwards about a 1/4 inch from the bench top. It will take a little finesse and an extra hand or two to get them to fit well. That was a little disappointing.

Erich, your model looks fantastic! I think I'm going to do the -46 version as well. I just like the carb scoop better and it has a little color to it with the yellow nose and rudder...

As promised, here are a few photos.

My now famous no dihedral wing!

The Barracuda resin cameras installed. Left side and lower fuselage boxes are cameras, the one on the right fuselage half is the back end of the left side camera.

Left side camera from the outside. Even though all the detail is hidden, it looks much better than just a black hole.

Assembled fuselage. Finally got around to adding the seatbelts. They're made from masking tape with buckles from .020 copper safety wire bent around the tips of my smallest pair of needle nose pliers.

Wing dry fitted to fuselage. Could be much better...

Some days you just can't win. Tried to get the 46 wing to fit to the fuselage today and thought I was doing ok until I tried to bend a just a little more dihedral in before gluing it on and broke the wing in half. After a colorful four letter metaphor session, I went to plan B and assembled all the pieces for the -47 wing. I still wanted them in the extended position, so I made some tabs from scrap styrene, gluing them to the upper and lower inboard wing sections so the outboard sections would have some support. The fit was not bad at all, and this wing actually managed to maintain some dihedral. Going to let it all set overnight before I try to fit the wing to the fuselage.

Paint is on the way, and I have a question for you FAA experts. Were the black and white Korean theatre stripes on the 800 squadron airplanes painted on in the field or before the squadron deployed to combat? I like to think they were applied with a brush in great haste on the hangar deck...

Greg, the fit issues that you mentioned are endemic with this kit but they are easily overcome, if you want a 1/48 Seafire then this is it my friend.
Cheers N.

Gregor, I will have to agree with you. Fit is absolutely horrible on just about everything I've assembled on this one. The 40 year old Revell A-20 I finished a while back went together better than this. The way I look at it, setbacks like this are what build your modeling character! Having said that:

The new wing was mated to the fuselage this afternoon. It came out pretty well, considering it was plan B. The join at the upper wing fold lines came out very well, though there is a bit of a gap on the bottom. I may leave it be after I see what it looks like with some paint on it. The wing to fuselage joint on the right side was fairly good, but on the left side there was a pretty good gap from halfway down the fuselage all the way to the trailing edge. I filled that in with some scrap styrene shaved to fit. Needless to say there will be quite a bit of filler needed here. My consolation is that the seam is along a color separation line. so it will be easier to hide! Horizontal stabilizers are not a tight fit at all, so I'll add those after I finish sanding the putty off the wings.

Neil, I think you may be right. The few photos I've seen of these airplanes show the stripes to be pretty straight. I don't know what shape my decals are in (they look ok, but you never know), so I may be taking you up on your offer!

A few mental notes:

1. If I ever have a brain fade and decide to do this kit again, I'll get the Barracuda resin prop. You haven't lived until you've filled and sanded dimples on the backs of six miniscule propeller blades.

2. I know now why I like 1/32 scale. Gluing the torque links onto the landing gear struts was an exercise in middle aged eyesight failure. I was lucky enough not to launch them off into space while trimming them off the sprues, and smart enough to leave the struts on the sprues while assembling them. I have no idea what I'm going to do with those itty bitty catapult hooks...

3. Superglue is wonderful stuff when working with ill fitting wings.

The build continues...