OK, bet you guys thought I'd given up, well close to it!
Ever have one of those builds where everything goes right and it just kind of puts itself together? I do occasionally, but not this one! Ended up purchasing a new airbrush, I just couldn't get the old one to work right and was getting nowhere replacing parts one at a time.
Anyway, here is "Tough Guy" (it's living up to the name) painted. The most significant mod is the cowl ring. This is a nice kit but Revell screwed the pooch on the nose. It has too much taper and winds up looking too small. On the real thing the cowl ring was slightly flared. I grafted a cowl ring from a Hasegawa kit on, didn't get it quite right (too big) but I think next time I should be in the ballpark, a little more sanding on the back side. The cockpit armor plates are made from .010" plastic stock, this took a few tries to get right and I still wound up out a little heavy handed on the rivet detail. The cowl machine gun troughs were filled in since the R-2 often deleted these to save weight. Put some landing flaps on and repositioned the rear elevators. If you look close you can see some home made resin inserts for the exhaust pipes too, Phewwww!
Sorry for the crappy pictures, little blurry and bad light but I wanted to get at least a couple in progress shots up before the weekend.
So without further ado, paint applied:
aka Mike, The Mikester My Website
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." -Winston Churchill