Greetings,
Well, this little Emil just zipped right along. Less than two weeks from sprue to completion. So, here he be:
One thing I couldn't bring myself to do was add those 18 tiny number decals along the fuselage panels. I called good enough after wrestling most of the other Tamiya stencils into submission. My airbrush cooperated nicely and my MM acrylic flat coat went on smooth and even.
One terrifying moment: I was looking over the flat coat, just about to touch up a few spots, holding the plane by a piece of plastic tubing I had slipped over the propeller rod on the front. Holding it at chest height above the concrete basement floor, the rod suddenly snapped and Emil dropped straight down, landing bottom side up as I heard the horrible sound of plastic skittering across the floor. I stood paralyzed for a moment, then bent down, bracing for total disaster. Unbelievably, the only damage was a bit of a bend in the trailing edge of the rudder, which had landed in a dusty corner behind the laundry sink. Two of the three canopy pieces popped off, but landed in plain view. I was able to carefully re-bend the rudder and reattach the canopies after unmasking. And all was well. No damage to the finish and all the little fiddly bits I had put on the night before -- cannon, aileron balances, pitot tube -- all stayed intact and attached. So this bird apparently has a charmed life.
Thanks much to tucohoward for sharing his technique on the antenna wire insulators and such. I used the fishing line I have on hand, rather than the EZ Line he recommended, but I followed his trick for making the little cones by softening plastic lids and poking with a toothpick. I didn't execute it as well as tuco, but I'll try again on the next 109.
I'm moving on now to Tamiya's F4F-4 Wildcat for the Grumman Iron Works GB.