Thanks all for the kindness. I'm finally in for an update. I'm wrapping up a bathroom remodel which has been consuming quite a bit of my free time. I hate household taping and painting. Anyways, with the 219, I'm limited to a few hours here and a few hours there. I did get the frame together and was surprised as this is a rather large aircraft. I somehow managed to slightly misalign the fuselage halves as the glue set, so I had a slight step to deal with. This resulted in more sanding through detail than I really needed..and the 219 has alot of detail at the seam.....ugh! I ended up losing the small circular access panels on the spine which were poorly engraved to begin with. Tried as I might, I was unable to salvage them. I may try to scribe them back in.
The nacelles fit good to the wing, but getting there is a challenge. They "clamshell" together, which leaves a nasty seam that I found tough to get out. I used the super glue accelerator trick on these. Fortunately there was no detail to worry about there.
Here we have the engine fronts, the antenna/nose, and the "Musik" added. I drilled out the Musik 30 mm cannon barrels and painted them. I'm not sure why as they will be hidden. Other than my seam issues, this has gone together quite nice.....no filler.
I'm having difficulty on deciding a scheme. The all light grey versions, quite frankly, bore me silly. I want one like that on the box art, which attracted me to the kit in the first place....black underside and preferably with spinner spirals. I figured I'd throw down the scheme and then peruse ebay for one that fits my stringent needs. Black finishes are still experimental for me, so I started by spraying the underside XF-24 Dark Grey with various mixes of XF-69 NATO Black and XF-1 Flat Black added. Here's where I ended up. I'll probably add some streaking later.
I highlighted the upper surface with more XF-69.
The black was then taped off to await the upper color, which I believe should be RLM 76. This is where I left off for now.
I hope to start paintng the camo soon. Oh all those littles RLM colored dots to come......
Joe