The Build
The first step was to close up all the panels I wanted closed. Some of these fitted quite well, others required a fair bit of trimming to make them fit. The advantage of doing this now is that I could reinforce the inside with strips of plastic.
I also used parts from a Neomega cockpit set to dress up the cockpit a bit along some generic photo etch (PE) placards.
Dry-fitting the nose halves revealed that some of the panel lines are way off and will need re-scribing.
As the kit cockpit only has PE for the consoles and instrument panel I decided to try and use the Neomega cockpit designed for the Airfix kit. Unsurprisingly this is far too large to fit the Kitty Hawk kit.
Rather than waste the resin I cut the detail from the Neomega cockpit, then after sanding it and the kit parts as thin as I dared, I attached the pieces to the kit tub. I think this could be a cheap and easy cockpit upgrade rather an a whole resin cockpit, hopefully some enterprising aftermarket producer will pick up on it
The Neomega seat was far too big for the kit tub so I ended up with a Paragon one that, after a bit of adjustment, looked the part, especially when fitted. Everything was painted Tamiya German Grey and the details were picked out with various Vallejo acrylics.
Next was the closing the open panels on the fuselage halves. Whilst the insides of these areas have some detail they really need resin or scratch building to make them look more like the actual aircraft. As these panels were designed to be open they all required a bit of adjustment to get them closed up but at least the contours were correct.
Before the main gear doors could be closed I had to install the main legs, which is not something I like to do at such an early stage. Here you do have to take your time to ensure a really good bond between the main legs and the fuselage, because if they come loose later on in the build it can be the end of the build (eh Bruce). For joins like this I like to use a 2 part epoxy such as Araldite.
Another tip I’ve picked up is to use a whiteboard marker to check the seams and joins, just apply it over the seams and let dry then polish using a fine sander to see where the low or high points are. I did find out later on that the main doors were usually open until just before flight as the maintenance guys had to access that area so I’d leave these open in any future builds.
As a general rule I’d rather deal with a seam along the centreline and not laterally around a model so deviating from the instructions I decided to attach the front and rear fuselage pieces together rather build the nose and rear fuselage assemblies separately. The fit here was quite good.
The fuselage was glued together. The join along the top seam was good however along the bottom seam there was quite a step. Fortunately the centreline rack would cover the worst of this.
The kit depicts the 2 bays to the rear of the main gear as being identical. In realty the right hand side has the ground refuelling point. After viewing some walk-arounds online, this was scratch built using some plastic card, wires and parts from the spares box.
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