I found the best process for attaching the nose section to the main fuselage was to attach it to the lower fuselage section first. This still wasn’t a great fit and filler is required but it’s a relatively simple job.
Before attaching the lower fuselage to the upper fuselage, the intakes need tackling and unfortunately, they are no better than the ones on the Hasegawa kit so I used the same remedy – home-made intake blanks made from Milliput two-part filler. The intakes could have been dealt with but it would have involved far more work than I was prepared to do. The fit of the intakes to the lower fuselage is again not perfect and filler is required but nothing to serious, more annoying as I had hoped that the fit in this kit would have been better – what unfortunately seems to be becoming a common theme as this build goes along.
At this stage I finally got to constructing the cockpit, which is unusual as this is normally the first stage of an aircraft build. The cockpit detail is quite nice and decals are provided for it which is great. I did use a combination of the kit decals and some I had left over from the eduard/Hasegawa build.
The main fuselage parts were joined together and the fit is OK but again filler is needed with the subsequent need for more of the sanding and re-scribing process – this is starting to become really tedious now!!
I normally also leave the jet pipes off until the end of the build but because of their attachment process I decided to fit them at this stage. This allowed me to sort out any fit issues (yes there were some again!) before painting and masking them up.
I now started to add all the smaller parts such as the flap actuators (the flaps and slats in this kit are fixed in the up position), the targeting pod and its pylon, the weapons pylons and the outer wing sections. I had originally hoped that the tail fit would have been a lot better allowing me to paint up and decal the tails separately and attaching them at the end. Although the fit of the vertical tails is a lot better than I expected it to be some filling and sanding was still required so these had to be fitted at this stage meaning some careful masking later on.
Toby Page says
Great build and write up Dave. I now know I need the ECS pipes as well, I have got replacement Eduard zoom for the cockpit and resin exhaust’s for when I build mine.