Well, continuing on with the construction of this........KIT...... I can safely say that I'm not gonna build another AMT Tigercat.
1. The instructions are extremely vague about how the landing gear mounts to the engine nacelles. After figuring out how they mounted, I discovered that the mounting holes for them don't even come close to being in the right spots. Thank goodness for pin vices & drill bits.
2. The instructions are also vague about how the radar scope hood mounts to the rear instrument panel. I just guessed at it. Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's right - who knows?
3. The engine nacelles do not have a good fit. After many test fits, I still couldn't figure out a good way to make them fit any better than they were going to, so I just used super glue with accelerator, and force-fit them to the wings. Still wasn't the best of results trying it that way, but, hopefully, the DARK blue paint will hide it.
4. The engines were molded incorrectly. They have adequate detail, but the rear set of cylinders for each engine (there's a front set & rear set of cylinders for each engine) were molded with the pushrod tubes facing to the rear of the engine. Oh well. At least they won't be easily seen once the model is assembled (I hope).
5. The rear instrument panel was impossible to make fit into the rear cockpit, so, I broke it in half, leaving the top half of the panel out, and then glued the rear cockpit in place. I then sanded the upper part of the rear instrument panel to fit the contours of the rear cockpit. Seems to work ok that way.
More later.........
Tamiya or Hasegawa, where are ya when I need ya?