Bringing it all together
Time to join those fuselage halves, a feat in itself.
Be prepared for some serious clamps, rubber band and tape action here – the fit is rather good, but you can see where filler was needed on the seams and underneath there was a small step to get rid of on the keal.
Prior to sanding and priming the seam joints the large open rear bubble canopy areas needed masking to protect the interior.
My trusty Blu-tack was applied around the bubble canopy edges, tape masks were shaped by using the canopy as a guide and then you can see how the seam tidies up, taking care around the pre-molded arial on the upper fuselage.
A first pass with the primer shows up some minor depressions on the resin tail both on upper surface and more populus underneath, simply fixed with liquid filler and a good rub down.
Moving forward again, the molded mooring rope needs to go….
Another first pass with the primer shows up some more seam filling and a step on the forward nose face above the observation hatch shutters.
All together not too onerous a task to fix, just the large expanse of plastic makes it time consuming, but worth the effort to get ‘just right’.