Build Review - Ocidental 1/48 Fiat G-91 R-3

One of my regular customers had a hankering for a "Gina" in 1/48. Options are limited, it's either this or the Heller version which is the same plastic. The Italeri version is not worth bothering with so I have tracked down one of these. I also have obtained the Neomega cockpit resin to dress things up a bit. The customer wants it in Luftwaffe markings, which are included in the kit but are of dubious quality, so the spares drawer will be raided on this one.

And so to the kit. Well, the mould is old. Very old. The parts are reasonably moulded, but they are very soft in outline which may present some problems. There is a lot of flash and the panel lines are deep and heavy but at least they are recessed. The kit brings to mind the golden age of plastic modelling, before we cared too much. So a challenge lies ahead. The shape is basically accurate, although I suspect that the nose may be a little long but nothing to worry about too much.

Having opted for the (frankly excellent) Neomega cockpit enhancements we start there and these painted up really well. Neomega are surely the kings of resin, often imitated but never equalled. The seat itself is a pure masterpiece and the belts are exquisitely represented - but that is for later. The tub replaces the kit parts very neatly without much argument. The only challenge is replacing the HUD section which requires a chunk of the kit plastic to be cut away. The plastic is thick and brittle and there is no way on earth that an accurate cut can be made, so I hacked away with impunity praying that the gaps could be neatly filled in later.

But before the fuselage can be closed up it is also necessary to install the undercarriage bays and this led me to my first experience of the kit engineering. Not good - the locating bars in the fuselage match the bay parts well but the actual bays are then way out of position. So some inventiveness was needed to secure them in the correct position and it was plain that some filling would be needed later. The bays themselves do incorporate some decent detail moulding inside them, if a little shallow, but at least they made some effort here.

And now to close up the fuselage halves. These fitted pretty well, the only problem being that I needed to shave the resin parts a little to get everything together - so I cannot really blame Ocidental for that. But it went together in the end and after much taping up I left it to set overnight to be sure. Once dry, I filled in the gaps around the HUD and smoothed over with filler. Next on went the wings and tail parts. These presented no real fit problems, although the port wing was rather warped and needed some heat treatment. They also needed a lot of sanding to remove the seams on the edge. The root gaps were not that bad, but they got well filled anyway.

The nose cone goes on next, and the instructions indicate that 10g of weight needs to be added to it. I would defy anyone outside of the particle physics field to get 10g of anything into that space, but I filled it with lead shot anyway. But after testing, it was clear that the additional weight of the resin cockpit as well meant that we were all OK and the tail would not sit down. The nose did, however, need a fair bit of filler and sanding to get the join seamless.

After masking the canopy and spraying it black, I gave the whole model a good coat of primer since with all that filler around the surface needed to be smoothed out well. This also revealed a few outstanding gaps and holes which I had to deal with. The underside was then sprayed light grey and masked out. I started the top side with the Lufwaffe grey and after a Blu Tack masking exercise added the dark green. I removed the masks and then proceeded to mask off the orange areas on the tail, wings and nose, which was actually a very time consuming job because of the placement of the orange panels. I mixed my own brand of dark orange to match reference photos as best as possible and applied these. Finally the tip of the tail and intake surround got an Alclad aluminium finish.

After two coats of Klear it was time for decals. This is a good time to point out how appallingly bad the kit instructions are. They just about get you through the build, but as far as the markings guide is concerned they are absolutely useless. Only a small fraction of the decals provided are even referred to and there is no positive placement indicated either. So I had to fall back on Mr Google to help me out here, along with a little educated guesswork and artistic licence. The customer wanted a Luftwaffe scheme but was not particularly fussed which one. The kit includes such a scheme but my sixth sense told me that the decals were going to be trouble, and I also did not like the German crosses which were far too fat and with a horrendously thick white border. So I raided my spares draw and fortunately managed to make up an almost complete scheme from there, but would have to fall back on the kit decals for a few of the stencils. And sure enough, when I applied them, they are very thick and glossy and refuse to submit to any amount of setting solution. Fortunately I only needed to use a few small ones.

Once done, I sealed the decals in with another coat of Klear and applied a black oil wash to the panels. After a subsequent matt coat I then applied a random mottled filter sprayed all over and also bleached out some of the panels to give a nice worn effect.

The next stage was to add the undercarriage. The kit wheels are fine, but the legs are very primitive and flashy. But I had no option but to use them so cleaned them up as best I could and after spraying, dry brushing and a little dirtying up they looked OK. The legs went on with very little trouble, but the undercarriage door arrangement (which is a little weird on the G91) was more tricky to get placed correctly. What I ended up with is not 100% accurate as the kit parts are shaped incorrectly but it's pretty close.

The final finishing touch was to paint and install the Neomega resin seat. The seat is so good that it did not need too much effort to come up looking perfect. I picked out the cushions, belts and a few other details on top of a black base and in no time it was looking excellent. I added ejection handles from my etch spares (they are not included in the Neomega set - the only black mark against it) and dropped the seat into place. This cockpit set really does turn what would otherwise be a very primitive model into something a little special.

And so she was finished. I am pretty pleased with the result, considering what one has to work with. But I have to say that one of the greatest joys of this craft is to get a decent result from a poor base, and in that sense this was a great build. But not for the faint hearted.

www.bowemodels.com

Build Review - Wingnut Wings 1/32 Pfalz D.IIIa

I've only re-discovered First World War aviation relatively recently. For many years, I avoided biplanes like the plague - too many memories of problems fitting the wings and the mind numbing process of rigging. But there are some attractions. These planes are spectacularly beautiful, and in the days before anyone worried about camouflage too much, there are some really bright and interesting colour schemes to be worked with. And then along come Wingnut Wings - a New Zealand based kit manufacturer dedicated to WWI aircraft and exclusively in 1/32 scale, which is arguably the best scale for these machines. They have quickly gained a reputation for producing kits of the highest quality and build-ability and when a customer came to me looking for a Pfalz I thought I'd check them out.

Sure enough, when the kit arrived (they have to be ordered direct from NZ), it oozed quality. The mouldings are superb, crisp and detailed like they should be. The decals are gorgeous, including lozenge patterns for the wings, and the instruction book (it seems crass to call it a "sheet") would not look out of place in a reference library. WW have really done their homework, including a myriad of reference photos and additional information that would more than satisfy any plane enthusiast, let alone a modeller. So how does it build?

Well we start, as ever, with the cockpit and this is based on a ribbed structure that will be enclosed within the fuselage. This kit has been designed by someone who loves the subject, and it shows. The parts are extremely well engineered and fit together very logically, with detailed painting call outs and helpful tips along the way. A number of decals representing dials for the interior and instrument panel add a really nice touch to what has to be one of the most rewarding cockpit constructions I have done. The only extra I added was a cushion for the seat made from rolled up tape, everything else you could possibly need comes out of the box, including some nice etched seat belts.

Next the engine mounts and engine bay are added to the cockpit assembly which build just as easily, which leads us on to the engine itself. This is a simply spectacular rendition of the Daimler Mercedes 180PS power plant made up from some 20 or more parts in its own right. To do this justice, I used a combination of Alclad and semi gloss black and picked out the brass and steel sections carefully with a fine brush. Interestingly, despite the sublime engineering of the kit engine, there is no representation of the spark plugs and leads which is a bit of shame since these are fairly prominent on the real thing. So I simulated some plugs from short cuts of polystyrene rod and added leads made from steel wire, which came up really well. A kit supplied decal for the engine plate on the case finished off a truly excellent looking engine. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, much will be hidden on the final model.

With the engined dropped into its bay, it was time to close up the fuselage. This is one of the few areas in which I had a little trouble. The fuselage halves would simply not close properly around the cockpit and engine and it took some judicious trimming of the spars to get everything together. Even then there was a small gap in front of the cockpit opening that needed careful filling. I also constructed the machine guns at this stage, although I left them off the model until later in the build. WW provide an option for either "basic" solid moulded guns or detailed ones using photo etch shrouds and sights. Of course, I chose the latter which while fiddly, looked fantastic once put together and painted.

I next added the tail elevator, rudder and lower wing section. A small amount of filling was necessary for the wing part but nothing more than one tends to find in most kits. I also added the undercarriage struts at this stage, but left off the wheels. I assembled the top wing section but that was going to stay separate until after painting.

So after "plugging the holes" to mask them she was ready for painting. I started with an overall coat of Tamiya grey primer, important because my chosen scheme was part pure white, which always benefits from a good primer. The chosen scheme (Hans Muller, Jasta 18) consists of a red front half and white rear half of the aircraft. So I started by spraying the rear half white, albeit a slightly "dulled" white incorporating a few drops of dark grey and dark yellow. Pure white never looks realistic! I then masked this off and moved on to the red front half (which includes the wings). I will lay a little rare criticism at the feet of Wingnut here, their paint references are a bit hit and miss, particularly with regard to the fuselage colours. They suggested Tamiya X-7 for the red. This is a pure, bright, primary red and would never have been seen on any WWI German aircraft. They tended to use what they called "carmine" which is red but with a more brown/purple hue. To be fair, the printed representation of the scheme looks about right to me, just ignore the call out. So I mixed up my own version of this, which was actually based on Tamiya Hull Red (XF-9) but brightened up a bit with some pure red and a few drops of yellow. I used this to coat the front of the aircraft and the upper wing section.

After a couple of coats of Klear, I was ready for decaling. I started with the lozenge pattern which goes on the underside of both sets of wings. WW provide a whole decal sheet containing this pattern (mercifully) - I would defy any modeller to enjoy taking on the task of doing it manually. These need to be cut into strips to place on the wing section and with a liberal coat of Micro Sol they settled down pretty well. Trimming them off around the wing shape was a little tricky and not done as cleanly as I would like, but if you look at reference photos one finds that it was far from clean on the real aircraft! Also provided are 1mm thick strips of lozenge pattern for use as wing rib tapes, which is a nice touch. I let these all dry thoroughly before moving on.

The marking decals look very thick and glossy on the sheet, but are actually quite thin once detached, and remarkably they appear to have no discernible excess carrier film either, which is a first. They are printed by Cartograf, as are all decent decal sheets, who really seem to have perfected the art these days. But be warned, the thin nature of the decals combined with their size (particularly the iron crosses for the wings) does make it tricky to eliminate every last wrinkle. At this stage I was glad I was not working on the Jasta 16b example which contains all-round body decals. But they settled on without too much trouble, and once finished all was sealed in with more Klear.

There is not really any panel detail to speak of, so my usual all over wash approach was not going to give me much return. So I pin washed the few recesses that exist on the body and wings before coating with satin varnish to give me the final finish. I then proceeded to apply some subtle variation by spraying a light grey filter in a random pattern over the red areas (no point applying it to the white). Next, I dry brushed dark grey and a little steel over the raised details which gives a satisfying "used" look, followed by some judicious leak staining and scuffing.

Finally came the point all biplane modellers dread, attaching the upper wing section. I had been preparing myself for this for hours, having had some extremely bitter experiences in the past doing this. The problem is that the struts and upper wings almost never line up in any dimension, and when you get one end seated the other pops out and/or the struts collapse, and once everything is finally in place you find the top wing wildly misaligned from the rest of the plane - if you've ever tried it you'll know what I am on about. So with some trepidation I lay the top wing section upside down on the bench, placed a drop of glue in each of the strut locator holes, offered up the plane body and prayed.

Well, what do you know? All the struts clicked into their holes without any complaint and when I turned the whole plane back over everything lined up perfectly. What I had expected to take me an hour took two minutes. As of now, this is the true benchmark of an outstanding biplane kit - and this is such a kit. I was completely stunned, in a very good way. Top marks to Wingnut Wings - you have truly overcome one of the most challenging aspects of an aviation modellers work.

Next, on went the wheels and tail skid. The only other part to install was the huge wooden propeller. Now, there are a hundred and one "open secrets" out there on line from all sorts of experts on how to get a really good wood grain effect on a plastic propeller (or any other part for that matter). Most involving primers, oil paints, hours (if not days) of drying time, sponges, flat brushes, leaves from the garden and a multitude of other family recipes. But let me tell you, with a bit of practice and nothing more than a bog standard medium brush and acrylic paints you can get a superb result. I used three colours, a mid brown/orange mix, dark yellow and dark brown. First I coated the prop with the medium hue, then "damp brushed" the lightest colour down the grain using just enough residual paint to leave streaks without covering. I gave the brush a little wiggle as I went to create a slightly varied grain pattern. Next, I did the same with the dark hue but more sparingly, following the same contours. Looked pretty good to me, but the final touch is gloss varnish, which brings out the grain as if it were the real thing. All done in ten minutes. Judge for yourself from the photos, but it looks pretty convincing to me!

And so this left the one remaining item of fear for any modeller - rigging. Although no rigging material is provided in the kit, Wingnut have thoughtfully pre-drilled anchor holes in all the right places which saved some effort. As with wood effect, there is plenty of advice out there as to the best way to do this, and let me tell you, there is no magic bullet that will avoid the fact that it will be a mind numbing and frustrating process. I have used several methods in the past, but the one that I have found gives the best compromise between the time it takes and the overall effect is steel guitar strings. There are other methods out there that may result in better overall detail, but they will take you considerably longer and probably drive you crazy. Also, this is a commission and so I want to give my customer the best value for money.

With my guitar string method, it is important to pre-stretch the string to make it as straight as possible, best way to do this is to put it on a guitar for a day and keep tuning it! Then it is a matter of trimming sections to the right length, and there is no substitute for trial and error here, to get it sitting perfectly in place without bowing. Once established, a small drop of cyano glue on each anchor point holds everything together. It is still a very time consuming and at times frustrating process but I got there in the end, finishing things off with a stroke of matt black paint down each wire.

And so she was all finished. I have to say this is up there with the best kits I have ever built, although being a slightly unusual subject compared with many of my recent projects it is perhaps a little hard to compare fairly. But there is no doubting that Wingnut Wings have hit a winning formula here, producing exquisite kits of the planes of this era that are awesome in their detail but also, and most importantly, extremely enjoyable to build. I very much look forward to my next one!

www.bowemodels.com

Build Review - Sweet 1/144 Desert Hurricane

Ignore the "interesting" box artwork. This is actually an excellent rendition of the classic WWII fighter in the diminutive scale. This is a commission build for a good customer of mine who wants it turned into a MK.IID "Can Opener" with the tank busting cannons under the wings. So a bit of scratch building beckons...

This is the first time I've done a hurricane in 1/144 scale, I did the Sweet P-51 recently and it was a lot of fun (except for the canopy masking, and this will be even tougher). This is an up and coming scale, now that tooling technology has improved so much and the detail on these things is better than many older 1/72 kits. So time to break out the magnifying glasses and get a check up at the opticians.

You get two kits in the box, in common with most Sweet offerings. As I have mentioned, I think this is as much about spares should the carpet monster strike, as anything. But in this case, the second kit is moulded entirely in clear styrene. The actual clear parts, i.e. canopy and wing light lenses, are duplicated on each kit sprue and this enables Sweet to give you two identical sets of sprues and you can "borrow" from the clear version for the solid one. It also means you end up with two canopies and four wing lenses moulded in solid plastic which are rather redundant, but it's a convenient way of designing the kit I guess. Building a complete plane from clear styrene would also present a few challenges since as ever, the clear plastic is rather brittle.

But I have to say the detail on the main parts in terms of the panel lines and fabric spars is exquisitely done and far better than I have seen in many 1/72 or even, dare I say it, some 1/48 kits (remember the old Airfix 1/48 Hurricane - that kit was an insult to the hobby). It is amazing how such finesse is now being applied to the smallest of scales by modern tooling methods.

But onwards, I started by spraying the fuselage and lower wing interiors in cockpit green. The seat and instrument panel are integral to the fuselage halves (remember the old Airfix kits?) and are extremely basic but I was not too worried as I knew for a fact that very little would be visible. My pandering to interior detail consisted of painting the instrument panel black, putting a blob of leather brown paint on the back of the cockpit to represent the headrest, and adding a couple of seat belts painted and cut from Tamiya tape. Anything further would be a complete waste of effort.

The two fuselage halves went together brilliantly, this is the first time in ages I have not had to apply any filler to the seams - just a quick swipe with a sanding stick. Similarly, the wings sections and tail planes clicked into place with no fuss - just my usual dribble of primer in the wing roots and also in the crack joining the lower wing section to the upper halves. Just to be safe! Now came the first bit of "additional" work to get this to a Mk.IID. The basic kit represents a Mk.I tropical version and in order to get it to a Mk.II I had to fill the panel lines behind the gun ports and re-scribe to make it look more like a Mk.II. Only 99% accurate, but it should fool all but the most geeky of geeks.

The next modification required was the air filter. The part provided represents the older version and this needed to be cut and filed down to represent the later, "pointy" shape sported by my chosen machine, "JV-Z BP188" which again, came out reasonably well - certainly good enough in this scale. The final significant modification was to fashion the pylon fairings for the 40mm cannons from spare plastic which took some careful cutting, sanding and checking against references. But in the end I had two fairings which looked right to me, and these were glued into place. I would leave the barrels until later, lest they got broken off during painting, which was otherwise a given. After adding the radiator housing, I dribbled a little more primer in all the seams to make sure everything was smooth and turned to the canopy.

I remember what "fun" I had masking the P51 canopy, this was even worse. Getting masking tape to hold fast in tiny patches is not easy, it tends to drift slightly every time you touch it. But I opted for the "trial and error" approach. That is, I cut out what I though were the right size and shape pieces for the panes of glass and adjusted re-did those that did not fit. Really painful, probably the biggest single stage of the whole build but got there in the end. I had to shave the edges of the canopy a little as well to get it to fit seamlessly in place. Phew.

I sprayed the whole underside with my own mix of Azure Blue. I have seen many different versions of this colour by modellers ranging from sky blue to indigo via turquoise. My own version was based simply on Tamiya flat blue mixed with plenty of white and a dash of yellow which worked for me. I carefully masked this off (no surprises how tricky this is in 1/144) then sprayed the whole upper surface with Tamiya desert yellow, which is a very good match for the middle stone colour used as a base on RAF tropicals. After Blu-Tack masking the camouflage pattern (again, tricky!) I then used my own mix of flat brown, red, yellow and black (trade secret, guys....) for dark earth to finish off the pattern. After unmasking she got two coats of Klear to seal everything in and was left to cure.

In the meantime I prepared the remaining parts, i.e. the undercarriage and spinner assembly. The prop/spinner is provided as a single part, which is a little disappointing even in this scale since it is tricky to get the paint demarcation between the red spinner and black blades looking convincing. The P-51 I made previously had separate prop and spinner parts, which is far preferable. Similarly, the undercarriage doors and legs are single mould pieces which leaves a little to be desired but with careful painting they came up well. I all constructed the cannon barrels from styrene rod, carefully glued together and allowed to dry thoroughly.

I used the kit decals for roundels and tail markings, but I needed custom lettering to create JV-Z. This scale is not well served in terms of third party decals and so I was pretty much on my own here as there was no realistic way of converting the stock lettering. In the end a decal sheet kept over from a Tamiya 1/48 Sea Harrier kit came to the rescue (which is an awful kit and got binned, but I kept the decals). It contained white lettering of exactly the right height and thickness and in the end, the "J" was cut from an "O" and the "V" made from two "1" numerals trimmed appropriately. The "Z", which needed to be red, actually came from walkway lines on an old 1/72 Lancaster sheet. But where would we be without resourcefulness? I made up the aircraft code (BP188) from an existing 1/144 squadron code sheet I had in stock.

One more coat of Klear followed by a black oil wash brought out the panel lines nicely. I finished by  spraying with two coats of matt/satin varnish. This stage is always very satisfying because finally it looks like a real plane. I then spent a little time adding a few stains and marks to give some more realism. The undercarriage popped in nicely and after glueing the cannons in place and placing the spinner, the model was complete.

I am really pleased with the way this model came out, especially given the scale. I am starting to get into these tiny models in a big way, and there is quite a range left to explore. I already have a number lined up to do in the future, my only wish is that the after market decals were available in the same way as they are for larger scales for military planes since I think this scale for small planes is going to be BIG. So to speak.

www.bowemodels.com

Build Review - Trumpeter 1/48 Sukhoi SU-24 "Fencer" D

This is a new commission from someone who loves these planes. This one is going to be "in flight", i.e.  landing gear up and pilot figures added. Also going for the secondary paint scheme in the kit, a beautiful two tone brown camouflage over a pale blue underside - gorgeous! I've also got some resin pylons to correct the lack of lower pylons in the box, but otherwise this is a fantastic kit. Unlike most Trumpeter kits, it also has an impressive decal sheet full of stencils and weapons markings. I have always had a soft spot for Trumpeter plastic, always beautifully moulded if sometimes however, some strange engineering choices and the odd accuracy problem. Traditionally, they have fallen well short on the decals as well, with limited markings, rarely any stencilling and often poor colour matches, but now they appear to have provided decent ones I can't wait to get going.

Like most of the larger Trumpeter kits, the first challenge is opening the box (why do they always make it such a tight fit?) and the next one is navigating your way through the seemingly endless sprues to find what you are after. There is little logic to the sprue layout as well, when starting with the cockpit section (as one generally does) the parts required actually come from about four different sprues which is a little annoying but not uncommon. The cockpit parts are very nicely done with very crisp detailing, although since I was not using any after market detail in this area I was left with the option of the kit supplied decals for the panels or painting myself. After spraying the cockpit tub with Tamiya XF-22 (which is a good representation of the Russian interior blue) I opted for the decals since on checking my references this cockpit it a cornucopia of colour and to replicate it with paintwork would take a very long time. The main instrument panel is moulded in clear plastic - not sure that was necessary to be honest. Like many kits, they somehow expect you to lay the panel decals over raised detail which is OK if the detail is relatively shallow, but in this case it is not. There is no way a flat decal is going to conform to those panels so I had the tedious task of trimming the decals into small pieces to conform to the major different sections of the panels. In the end this worked fairly well with a good blast of Micro Sol.

The side by side seats are actually rather nice and include well moulded belts. Normally I would file these off an use some etched alternatives but the customer had provided me with a couple of pilot figures since this is intended to be an "in flight" model. I am not a natural figure painter, but I gave them my best shot on the basis that not too much will be widely visible once the cockpit canopies are closed. They seemed to come out to a satisfactory standard!

The cockpit tub now fits easily inside the two forward fuselage hlaves, and I also attached the radome at this stage. More out of habit than anything, I filled the radome with a good slug of lead shot, because even though this plane was to be without its undercarriage, it still helps to keep things nicely balanced. The radome needed a little bracing to match the shape of the fuselage section perfectly.

I next put together the central undercarriage bay section which also supports the wing sweep mechanism. This is beautifully detailed and it is a shame that it was not going to be visible on this model, but at the same time it was very nice not to have to worry about getting it painted up at this stage. I left off some of the unnecessary details but the basic structure went together nicely, including the two large cogs on top that drive the wings. I left them free to spin at this stage, even though I knew I was going to fix the wings forward (as agreed with the customer) to allow me to ensure correct positioning before committing. It is also necessary to assemble and paint up the exhaust section at this stage, which I gave a coat of matt black followed by separate streaked coats of Alclad "burnt iron", "exhaust manifold" and "steel" to give it the appropriate scorched metal appearance.

And now the tricky bit - putting the two main fuselage halves together. This is a large model and it was plain to me that the fuselage halves would need support internally to give them rigidity, so I braced them with cut sections of sprue. This would hopefully make the process of "de-seaming" safer and easier. They fitted together around the wing mechanism and exhaust port very well, although I thought it best to leave it overnight for the glue to dry before touching. Unlike many planes, the main fuselage is fairly flat on the top and bottom, and most kit manufacturers would have gone for a "top and bottom" approach here, but not Trumpeter. This means that dealing with fuselage seams is quite tricky and potentially very destructive to the exquisitely fine surface detail. I spent an inordinate amount of time sanding and re-scribing to get a remotely acceptable join, which was a shame, but it has to be done.

Next the wings go together. The top and bottom halves fit extremely well, but my customer wanted all the control surfaces flat. Now Trumpeter have gone to a lot of trouble to provide separate and extended slats, flaps and spoilers but it is readily apparent that they are designed to be deployed, not flat. Whilst technically they may be built flat, it took quite some shaping, sanding and scouring to get them truly flush with the wing surfaces.

The wings fit well onto the fuselage via strong pinions into the swing cogs, and the wing gloves the cover the mechanism go on in two halves, top and bottom. Engineering wise, this works very well but getting a flush fit does take a bit of doing. Once done, I took the opportunity to lock the wings in forward position by placing them correctly then squirting cement into the mechanism via a precision glue pot. Once left to dry, the wings were rock solid, as required. The tail fin goes on very nicely with no problems, just a smidgen of filler down the seams which was probably not necessary, but I played safe. The tail planes are a little trickier. They are attached by a single, relatively flimsy, rod and they do not line up with the fuselage side particularly well. References showed that this is the case in real life as well, so I carefully glued them fore and aft where they touched the fuselage.

Next I managed to skip the steps to install the undercarriage, and instead had to carefully locate the covers shut. As with the wings, whilst they theoretically fitted, some careful trimming was needed to get them seamlessly shut. A bit of filler was also needed here. With a few stabiliser fins in place and the canopy masked and attached, we were ready for the paint shop.

This model has a really nice, delicate, panel and rivet pattern on the body which is very accurate both in terms of the actual panels but also in their depth. However this can be a problem for modellers who, like me, like to use a wash to bring them out after painting in the sense that the various layers of primer, paint and varnish required can rapidly block these out. However, after all my seam work the surface was multi textured and definitely needed priming to give a consistent surface. So I carefully sprayed the whole plane with Tamiya Fine Grey Primer, but only lightly, just enough to hide the sanding and filling efforts.

First the overall underside blue went on. The instructions suggest Tamiya XF-22 but this is too turquoise to my eye so I mixed up some flat blue and white to what appeared to be the right level and sprayed the underside and walls of the plane with this. After using a considerable amount of masking tape to cover it, the top surface got the camouflage treatment using two custom mixes of brown. Once unmasked, I softened the demarcation on the sides freehand. Finally I carefully masked and sprayed the white areas on the fin and wing gloves. Next my usual couple of coats of Klear and left to dry.

Whilst this was curing, I constructed and painted the ordnance. The customer had provided me with the Eduard Brassin set for the rocket pods, predominantly because Trumpeter have failed to provide more than two of the sub pylons that are pretty much always used on this plane. So I made up the pods and also four KAB bombs, painting the former with Alclad aluminium and steel.

The decals went on next, and this is a really nice decal sheet from Trumpeter, unusually. Some of the stencils are done using tiny blocks and lines instead of Cyrillic letters, which is a bit of cheat but other than on extremely close inspection they work well enough! A word of warning, though. On my kit, the second decal sheet containing weapons stencilling seems to use extremely thin decal film that does not break, but wraps itself up into terminal knots if you are not careful - ask me how I know.

Once decaling was finished, and after a further coat of Klear to seal them in, I smothered the whole plane in dirty black thinned oil paint, and proceeded to clean it off. End result, as with any wash, is that all the panel detail and other nooks and crannies get black paint left in them which brings out the detail and generally makes the plane look like it has actually been used! This was a far more painful process than usual due to the size of the plane and also the amount of surface detail involved. However it was worth it, she came up looking a stunner!

A final couple of coats of matt varnish and she was finished. Finally, I attached the weapons, although the KABs on the belly were only attached temporarily using Blu Tack for the purposes of taking the photos, since otherwise there is no way of setting this model down on a flat surface! I'll let the customer attach them more permanently if they wish once she is hung from the bedroom ceiling!

So in summary, this is a fantastic kit from Trumpeter (if a little pricey), it has a few awkward areas but it is generally accurate (with one or two exceptions but nothing to fret over) and is seriously impressive once built. I would love to do a full "everything hanging out" version at some time in the future but it is a lot of work, so that may have to wait for another day....

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