Wow. Lots of progress since I went 100% off the grid for 8 days and am now back to digital addiction. Spiros @fiveten - the paint and decals look absolutely terrific. You're near the finish line. And John -@johnb - that cockpit is a winner! I'm surprised that your Tamiya kit appears to have some fit issues.

Keep it up guys!

@airbum, thanks Erik, some rounds will be required.

@eb801, thank you, Eric. Mine is the Revell kit which is a originally and AM kit. Likely some of the fitting issue is also caused by the constructor, me.

Nice that you started yours, my friend @gblair!
Looking forward to your progress!

@gblair, looking forward to some pictures of your IL-2 interior, George

@eb801, to make it a bit more confusing, Spiros @fiveten is doing the original AM in 1/48, I'm doing the 1/48 Revell variant which is basically an AM as well. Sebastijan @inflames will be doing the 1/72 Tamiya and George @gblair will be doing an original 1/48 AM as well. Michael @michaelt is joining with a Tamiya 1/48 variant and Pedro @holzhamer will be jumping in with an 1.48 AM kit combined with some nice after market parts.

With my B-17 ferret complete, I can finally jump into the IL-2. As usual, I started on the cockpit. I wanted to experiment a little with pre-shading in the cockpit, so I started by painting the parts using Tamiya flat black paint. I then sprayed a very thin green on selected parts of the floor, followed by an overall very light spray over the entire floor to blend things together. I used the portable dual action airbrush I got on an Amazon deal for about 20 dollars. I had never used a dual action airbrush before, but I am slowly gaining experience in using it. The airbrush works great for thin paint mixes and is really suited for small jobs.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looking forward to your build, my friend @eb801!
Great start, my friend @gblair! Very nice technique, yielding a nice shadowing effect!

After "this and that", its done: