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Time to play catch-up, as I am now quite confident I will complete this kit by tomorrow night. I first built this kit as the KP Avia C-2 many, many, moons ago. I think the kit was issued circa 1980. The Arado B-1 was unarmed, but other B-subtypes were armed with either a machine gun or bombs, depending on the training role. The kit includes parts for both, neither of which are obviously being used here. I assumed I had taken a picture of the contents months ago, as I had already decided to do build the kit for this GB, but only after I'd started it did I realise I'd not done so ... The kit includes marking for a Hungarian aircraft in a 3-colour upper camouflage, but unfortunately this is an A-series with a completely different cowling profile, which cannot be built from this kit. That's not the only issue. The instructions clearly bear no relation to this tooling, as they far more detail and advanced parts engineering. A quick check online confirms they are copied straight from the Special Hobby Ar 96 kits: Naturally, this causes certain issues with matching up parts, and in detail painting. I had always viewed Mistercraft as being sloppy if not incompetent, but maybe that should be upgraded to downright shady, Some of the surface detail is a bit busy, although some of the fuselage detail was going to get obliterated in fixing the canopy fit. Maybe I'm in a minority here, but I wish Airfix had applied this sort of detail to (say) the current Lancaster tooling, rather than the plain recessed panel lines they did use. Some of the parts are extremely thick: Normally, I'd complete the tail section first, partly to use it as a guide for orienting the main wing assemblies at the correct angle. Not so here. The wing to fuselage join required quite a bit of cleaning up, but it was very far from the being the worst I've ever seen. The one-piece tailplane & elevator looked as if would be too far aft, so some minor surgery was required to bring if forward by about 2mm. The canopy was relatively thin, but still distorted, and only an average fit. The canopy was too narrow, leaving an ugly "step" on each side, which in turn required a lot of careful sanding - and loss of fuselage surface detail - to rectify matters: Cockpit framing complete, both RLM 02 undercoats and RLM 70 top coat. The exhaust stubs I cut right down from the bulky and oddly shaped originals. The main fuselage doors were extremely thin, a marked contrast to much of the rest of the kit. Tomorrow, I'll move onto the painting.

Here is my next finished model from Special Hobby 1/72 It's the Arado 96 from Slovakia. Painted with a brush and using Humbrol Metalcote colors. I am hoping that either Special Hobby or KP will produce an Arado 96 with a machine gun and in Bulgarian colors. Hope you all like it. - I could only get Flickr to let me post one view of it tonight, sorry.