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Now a word of warning from the bitten…
and I should heed what I preach – read the instructions!!! In my haste I saw a set of forward wing root inserts on a sprue, assumed they were the only set and glued them in place – WRONG!!! As note earlier there are a lot of MK.IX parts on the sprues and I used the wrong ones, fortunately they had not set properly and I managed to prise them off without any damage and replace them with the correct ones – will I ever learn – probably not!!
The gun inserts are the only weak fitting areas that need a little sanding down and filling – not excessive I grant you but strange as the rest of the kit fit is so good.
The tail fit is perfect but once again I slightly mucked up and managed to get some glue into the elevator/tailplane join which glued them in place rather than letting them move up and down – not and issue for me as I’m not a great fan of moving surfaces and I intended to fix them in position later on in the build – it just happened earlier than I planned. I purposely left them with a downwards angle to add some interest and I will set the rudder at and angle later as well to add some interest.
As I said earlier I put the tail wheel fixing unit in upside down and it was now that I realised this was the option tail wheel unit (you have an extended and retracted option) and would not fit. A few anxious moments with a sharp knife allowed me to remove the unit and replace it the right way round- be warned!!
I also realised that at this point I had forgotten to fit the PE flap side panels to the cockpit side – I feel like this build is turning into a comedy of errors at the moment and its all my fault I may add – not the kits – I must read the instructions!! Fortunately this was easily fixed but cutting them down in size and slotting them in place before using superglue to secure them.
What else can go wrong I ask my self? Well here we go. On removing the masking tape that had held the front fuselage parts together I noticed quite a lip between the two sides and when I sanded them flush I managed to obliterate the raised area just in front of the canopy- unfortunately there was no way round this as the lip was on this raised area as well and it was too late to split the fuselage and start again. I’ll just have to replace this later in the build with some thin plastic card.
It may seem that everything is going wrong with this build but to be honest I’m only highlighting the areas that I’ve had problems with and the majority of the build has been trouble free – honest!!
One thing I’ve noticed with a lot of builds is you think you have a seamless joint and you do for a day or two then a fine hairline joint appears along the seam. I think this is due to the glue/filler contracting so I now leave the kit for a day or two before I get on with the painting to ensure the seam has gone. (Check out your Techniques Bank for how to get rid of these hairline seams).
In the meantime I’ve gotten on with all those little bits that always seem to be left to the end. These are the ones you end up rushing and invariably muck up so doing them now is not such a bad thing. I sorted the PE in the radiators, cleaned up the resin wheels (the Tamiya ones are fine but aren’t weighted and there is a thought that the soft plastic will perish in time), made the undercarriage legs and the auxiliary fuel tanks. I also cleaned up the figure and prepared it for painting.
