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Hello everyone. As I have never participated in a Group Build on Britmodeler before, I'm not certain what I must do. I have not "registered" or signed up anywhere special, and am not certain whether to post here, or in the regular W.I.P., which I have frequented from time to time. If I am in error, please advise my next course of action. But for now, I'll begin here. For some reason, I had it in my head that this build would start Jan 1st, so I am late to the party! I had already determined to add my Matchbox RF-101B (kit PK-411, IIRC), because I needed a new variant for my collection of USAF VooDoos. I have had this kit laying about for decades, and as with many other folks', it was definitely the lowest on the F-101 totem pole of builds. That being said, I felt that this would be a quick, easy build, with another build in the books. As you will see, when I actually got into it, various gremlins reared their ugly heads... To begin, the kit at first looked like this: I had long ago tossed the old "loose ends" box for fear of losing some parts. (This was to be prophetic, but not a salvation!). The fuel tank halves had been glued together, and almost the entire airplane had it's panel lines re-scribed, as was the fashion in the early 80's. I had decided to go with a made up cockpit, as the kit's was really way too simple, and again, I was going for an easy "quickie". The first mod was to drill out the little light window on the left side of the rear cockpit, which was then opened to size with various tiny needle files: Next, a piece of old clear plastic kit stand from the spares box was sawed up to provide a lens piece. When nearly the precise size, the edges were sanded at a slight bevel, so that the lens would fit down into the hole, yet protrude a bit above the surface. This allowed me to apply liquid cement only to the edges, and keep it off the lens face: Later, it would be sanded down and polished smooth, as shown in the next pic. Meanwhile, using white canopy cement, I glued the resin cockpit tub into the right fuse half, along with some lead fishing sinkers (Figure "A"). (About 20 years ago, I bought a couple hundred pounds of 70/30 lead solder bars, as the old automotive body men used to use, for around $.50/lb, for casting lead soldiers. I still have enough left to skoff at the lead police!) Figure "B" represents a plastic card structure to hold the cockpit tub level, while globs of white canopy glue were heaped to hold everything in place: I decided to use an old resin F-101A cockpit tub that I had laying about. I also have a Revell F-101B kit to build, and since I had bought a resin cockpit set for that, I will use the Revell instrument panels, their decals, ejection seat, control sticks, etc., on this kit, which will hopefully upgrade the kit a bunch: Well, that's it for a start. Next time, I'll get into my boo-boos, and how I hope to solve them. I hope I can get this "simple" project done by the end of February! Later, Ed