Greetings all. I'm slowly but surely moving along on this turkey. I got the landing gear and doors painted. I really wasn't sure what colors to paint the doors and bays. The general consensus seems that they were either Aluminum on NMF planes or sprayed Neutral Grey on OD over NG subjects. I went with Neutral Grey (XF-53). I did lighten it up a bit for scale using Flat White (XF-2). I then weathered them with a diluted mixture of NATO Black XF-69 and Red Brown XF-64. This technique creates shadows and the illusion of dirt.
Onward towards construction. Lets face it, there's really no easy way to build this airframe. Alot of it is just Kelly's Johnson's unique design. That aside, the fit is just downright bad in certain areas, most notably where the booms meet the upper wing by the supercharger and the seams on the side of the gun access panels to the wing root. I can only compare the latter it to assembling the engine nacelles on the Monogram B-17 (for those who've built that). That said though, if you dry-fit, do a little chopping here and filling there, alot of the issues can be dealt with. Here's how I did it:
1. First I closed the pilot/gun center pod and sealed it with Tenax, my glue of choice. Sorry, but I forgot to take pictures of this process here but I'll explain it thoroughly. Its pretty much modeling 101. The pod closes like a clamshell with a seam that starts at the nose and goes all the way through to the wingroot. The resulting seem here is pretty bad and will need alot of sanding and filling. Once all glue was dry, preferably overnight, I masked off as much detail as possible then used 180 grit paper in the seam. I like Tamiya's sandpaper. This is a nice course grit and evens things out quickly. Follow it with 320 grit which starts to smooth it out (2. I then run over the seam with a silver Sharpie. This works like a charm and reveals any seam issues. Actually, I use this trick on all my builds. I then fix gaps or holes with super and accelerator. Then sand flush. Repeat as necessary.
3 Once satisfied, I rescribed any lost detail. On this guy, I ended up rescribing the gun access panels because they were fairly soft anyways.
Its now time assemble the booms and add the "J" version inserts. Just like Hasegawa P-40 series, the plugs dont fall on panel lines so there was alot of sanding and filling. It was just a matter of "precision" sanding using the above process. The panel lines on belly of the engines were soft too and needed rescribed. I then added the gear bay guts and then attach the booms to the pod.
Now for some pictures. This is what it looks like from the top and where most of the boom alighment problems start.
Now...I'm convinced the green circled area is where the fit problems start. The piece indicated by the red arrow in the second picture seems to be the main culprit.
The remedy? Well, I just sanded out as much of this plastic as I could then chopped off the plastic indicated by the red arrow (both sides of boom) with an Exacto knife. Now the booms sat as intended. Don't get me wrong, the area will still need lots of the above outlined sanding and some rescribing, (4 hours worth to give an estimate) but at least the crooked boom problem will be solved.
The rest of it went together in typical Hasegawa fashion. I'm gonna check my seams with primer, fix any flaws, then get ready for preshading and paint. I suppose I better decide on a scheme soon.
