The canopy is one of the main visual differences between the three versions. I opted to have it open and added some extra PE detail for the locking levers and I also masked and painted the interior.
We’re nearing the end now and the aerial was added using Lycra thread and brass tubing for the insulators. Check your references again for its configuration as this changed with variants.
The outer wings were finished off next with their lamps and pitot tubes. One of the few weaknesses with this kit is the lack of any 50 cal machine guns for the wings. These can be seen on the real thing in the recesses so your options are either to ignore this (not going to happen !!), fix aftermarket barrels into the wing (an option), or cover the ports over as was regularly seen on the real things to stop the ingress of dirt into the barrels and gun bays. For this I cut white strips from the unused kit national insignia decals. A note here, the ‘D” model doesn’t have fuel caps on the outer wings and these need to be removed – I didn’t see this until too late and I wasn’t going to remove them at this point in the build plus with the wings folded you couldn’t really see them.
One of the main armament differences with the “D’ was the outer wing hard points for rockets and these are included in the kit.
