lostagain
Looks great Pat, how did you find the build of the kit? How was the fit? Was there much filling to be done on the build, given the age of the kit - it's older than me...
Lostagain and Dodgy,
Thanks for the feedback. Overall, considering the age of the kit, and its relatively small scale (1/144) I kind of like the kit and think that its not too bad.
Since the fuselage appears to be at least partially corregated, and the wings appear to be cloth covered, the level of detail isn't too bad and does not look too out of place. And surprisingly some of the parts were fairly finely made (like the propeller blades) but still look pretty good, even though the molds used are fairly old.
For me the only real shortcomings of the kit are that the clear parts are thick, and end up not looking too clear (I appears that there might be some sink marks in them). As such, since the plane doesn;t have any interior I ended up painting the inside of the clear parts Black, so that there still have a glossy outer appearance.
As far as fot an finnish, I thnik that there were two sink mark on the lower surface of the tail, and I needed a little putty around the join of the tail and fuselage, as well as the upper and lower seem between the fuselage halves, and also just a little around the fron of the engine nacelles.
Two things that I noticed, that I maybe would do different if I did it again, are that;
- I wasn't carful enough in mounting the tail to the fuselage, so that it ended up a little crooked
- in the instructions the wings aren't installed to late in the process, which results in a visible seem at the front and back join of the lower wing to the fuselage. I saw a video on YouTube where someone else who was building this kit suggested gluing the lower wing to the fuselage first, before attaching the upper wing, so that it would be easier to try and clean up these joins between the lower wing and the fuselage.
Other than that I actually found that attaching the upper and lower wings together took a little care but wasn't as bad as I feared it could be. Because many of the struts are molded together in large "W" sections I was able to glue them to the bottom wing and let them glue dry enough that they stayed in place, but still had a little give. The wings are molded with locater holes or depressions in the wings that align very well with theses struts, making attaching them not a big problem.
I then went through one by one gluing the upper attachments of each "W" section to the wing, and letting the glue dry before going to the next "W" section. That way there was enough "give" in aligning the tops of the struts to the upper wing to get everything to fall into there correct locator hole positions. Once the glue for everything is dried, the combine top and bottom wing unit ended up being fairly strong and robust.
One mistake that I did make though in putting together the model, was that I inadvertantly put the left lower engine nacelle on the right side and vice versa. Overall it wasn;t a big mistake, though I had to fill one locater hole on each nacelle and trim one set of struts, since one locater hole was on the wrong side of each nacelle, now.
Pat