I truly appreciate all your positive (very positive if I may add) comments on the work so far gentleman 🙂
I managed to glue the fuselage halves last night and this morning went to see how they turned out
The short run nature of the kit revealed itself on the cockpit placing. The instructions are somewhat vague so I believe the method SH advises is not the best one, but it was the one I followed. The rear wheel well fits really good with minimal glue application, but the cockpit tube was a bit of a struggle, the first attempt resulted in splitting the side parts from the cockpit floor.
After getting them back together I proceeded by glueing the tube to the left side wall, using my MK.1 eyeball to determine best position and angles. Perhaps because my Mk.1 was not very well calibrated I found the joining the halves was a tad difficult on the forward section where a nasty gap required some muscle to be tamed to conformity. I usually only use Liquid glue (Tamyia green cap bottle) but for the lower front I had to resort to CA, a portion of which spilled to the kit surface, but that did solved the issue of the gap.
As you can see (and I believe as consequence of the poor cockpit tube positioning) the halves are not evenly joined despite my care during glue application. They must have moved before the plastic completely dried up. This means some sanding and rescribing, nothing too serious.
The engine cowl, already with a second Mr Surfacer application on the gaps, is dry fitted and as you can see it’s a great fit, no issues whatsoever. The thinned walls of the cowl flaps paid off and gives a good sense of scale thickness.
The rear canopy is also finally ready, after a first putty session, sanding and painting, where I came to see that the plastic showed other imperfections besides the hole in it. So more putty, sanding and now ready for the final interior green coat. To get a good placement of this part I can tell you some pressure will be required, especially since I use white glue that has a slow drying time.
