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Day two…
Here I’ve painted the interior and the engine. According to the instructions there’s an aluminium strip running the length of the cabin floor. I assume it’s to secure any load. I replicated this by painting some masking tape and laying that down. The seat belts are also tape.
Now for my nemesis, fitting windows. A quick test fit of two windows suggested that the windows are a good fit. I decided to use one of my latest buys, Gators grip glue. It looks just like thick PVA but I’ll try anything once. I usually manage to either get glue on the window or when I come to mask them they fall out, so let’s see if I manage any better using Gators Grip. I’ve deliberately put loads of glue on the inside in the hope the windows will stay put, the excess glue can’t be seen through the windows.
Although the interior looks a bit ‘agricultural’ with chunky seats and dollops of glue very little can be seen when the fuselage is closed up and that’s the next job. Care needs to be taken to avoid any misalignment along the fuselage join as it would require some delicate work to make it good and not spoil the fuselage shape.
Up to this point everything has fitted well but before we close the fuselage we have to fit a skylight window and it drops straight through the hole. I mounted two bits of plastic card to act as a sort of shelf for the glass and that’s worked up to a point. The window just doesn’t look good with a small gap at one end. I’ll wait until everything’s dried out and then we’ll look at it.
The engine got a coat of grey primer along with the interior. The cylinders were painted with Revell’s Aluminium and when dry Tamiya Smoke (X-19) was washed over it.
There’s a small number of sink marks on the fuselage. We’ll deal with those as well as any work on the fuselage join and the skylight in the next chapter.
One thing I’ve discovered that doesn’t show up on any pictures I’ve seen is the fact that the tail unit has two bracing wires from the lower fuselage, through the tail planes and fin and back to the other side of the lower fuselage. After rigging Aeroclub’s Felixstowe flying boat I swore to never again rig anything, I still get cold sweats when I think about it. So we’ll need to think about the best way to achieve that.