Hi everyone. Now that I'm a week into my build I thought it time for a WIP update.
The kit is a Hobby Boss 1/48 FJ-4B Fury. As for the kit itself it consists of 3 spures of flash free light grey parts with fine recessed details. There is 1 spure of clear parts and decals for 2 aircraft. The instructions consist of 7 steps with no written instructions. Based on the quality of the parts I expected this to go together with little trouble. None the less I've done a lot of dry fitting and discovered some issues along the way.
Step 1 involves building up the cockpit. This goes together without much fuss. One word of caution is placement of part number A17, the insturment panel. If you do not set this at the proper angle you will not be able to install P/N A16 over the IP in step 4. The details on the instument panel are so faint that I could not dry brush them. So I ended up sanding, painting black, and placing a IP decal for my spares. The ejection seat does not include seat belts so I fabricated my own from masking tape and brass wire. Following are some photos.
Step 2 involves the placement of the cockpit, nose gear landing bay, cementing the fuselage halves together and finally the building of the main lading gear bay. I have not completely completed this step. One note on this step is that the instructions are very vauge as to the location of part #'s A6 and A7. I had to do some dry fitting. After I was satisfied with the location I glue these is place, did some minor gap filling, and painted aircraft gray.
The landing gear bays were painted insignia white and given a wash of light gray. The hydraulic lines were painted aluminum and a couple of details were picked out with flat black. I skipped ahead to step 3 which involves installing the main lading gear bay in the wing and then cement the wings together. The landing gear bay fit is not real good. Something seems warped. I ended up gluing 1 side securing it with clothes pins. After it dried I glued the other side in the same fashion. I added super glue afterwards for more strength.
I skipped to step 7 and built the ordinace. These went together without any trouble. I filled the seams and primed these in preparation for paint.
That's all for now. Thanks for looking. As always questions and comments welcome.