A brief summary and review is probably in order for this drawn out post. First of all, part of this project involved my ongoing journalism career. I was always a photographer when covering a story situation and couldn't even type well. As semi-retirement has set in now I can fill in the gaps of story telling with the help of my dear wife who taught Journalism for years. She has been instrumental in developing my new passion and endeavour. She often edits my work with a large teacher-like red pen. The Forum has been a fun place to be allowed to rave on about other passions such as motorcycles, modeling, photography and writing. Thanks for your support!
Back to the Super Tweet. My mission in modeling usually is to build examples of aircraft history for my so-called Museum. They almost always are OOB and look as they came out the factory door. I appeciate everone's praise but my work doesn't even begin to approach the levels of talent shown on the Forum by others. Weathering and incredible detail work shown by the Gang is beyond my reach even though I try to dabble in it. Credit where credit is due!
I see the said model is on sale at Squadron for about $17, down from the earlier $50. The experience of the build was frought with issues of the concept of packaging aftermarket ideas in an existing kit from a Revell mold. Instructions seemed to be vague and disconnected from the original concept. Some resin parts were no better than the originals and you had to remove them from large blocks. The resin cockpit and seats were well detailed and the photoetched parts were superb. The instruments assembled in 3D and were pre-colored.
This was my first experience with resin parts. Almost everything I tried as adhesives didn't work. It was like glueing bars of soap together. In one case they said to cut off the original fueling probe and replace it with almost identical resin one. Good luck with that! None of the adhesives that I tried could make that work.
The biggest time consuming challenge was the fitting of the cockpit tub which had zero reference points and no place to attach. It also had to be installed before assembling the fuselage halves along with very large constructed weights. Add some side panels and an instrument panel along with these adhesive problems and the model was nearly put away. Ah, but modeling is problem solving but more than I wanted in this supposedly simple model. My final solution was to use hot glue to secure and provide mounting.
I suppose if you like challenges this could be one. It is cute when finished! If I was to do this again I think I would explore finding a better detailed kit at least for my purposes of display.
I did learn several things on the build or at least was introduced to them as in resin parts. My decaling finally got quite acceptable on this build, thanks to everyone's advice. My painting procedure still needs some work to obtain the gloss needed for decaling and I need to try some different types of paint. Several past masking issues were adressed such as tapes and methods. All positive.
Anyway, that's my semi-brief report. Plus and minus things, things learned, reporting W.I.P. was really fun and everyone's comments spurred me along. I got to write, photograph, interact with friends and came up with an acceptable Museum piece along with at least a small history lesson on the Super Tweet. What could be better!
Thanks for your support Gang!
Max