Cockpit side walls
These are fun to paint and detail and I’ve used a Payne’s Grey oil wash plus some dry-brushing with a lighter green and then spot-painting for the small details as you can see here. Some of the small levers that have round knobs on needed the round knobs adding and a small drop of Micro Kristal Klear is good for this. Just allow about an hour for it to dry and on goes the paint.
The side walls are test-fitted here and they all fit well, so it’s to the main instrument panel and getting that all painted and detailed. Mostly it’s dark grey and green with ribbed tubular pipes attaching to the rear – dry-brushing works nicely on these. Then it’s all the small details like stencils and fine detailing, much of which comes from small pieces of lead foil in my mini-spares box. Some specific stencil data and placards come from an old Eduard pre-painted placard set. The end result is pretty pleasing.
Engine bay and cockpit joined
I had started to assemble the engine bearers and install the engine and this all fits quite well, even though getting the Merlin engine to sit exactly centred within the engine bearer assembly isn’t easy.
A network of silver piping (incredibly a one-piece moulding) is attached to the underside of the whole assembly and to the rear of this the radiator and ventral ducting is attached. The good news is that all this fits very well and now that that whole sub-assembly is pretty much there I just hope that the separate fuselage side panels and remaining fuselage panels will all join to it as planned – we’ll see!
Just a small heart-stopping moment… You’ll need to take great care if you’ve already installed the flat carburettor air induction duct that sits beneath the engine (as I had) because the piping will have to be threaded in between the engine bearers and engine but it can be done. If you follow the instructions this ducting should be added later in the build – your choice.
Here are a few photos showing nearly the whole internal sub-assembly onto which I can now start to add the fuselage side panels and wing assembly☺.
