Cutaway Beaufighter

[pbhawkin]

The clear parts supplied by Mark1 are absolutely the best injection castings I have seen. Extremely clear.
Here I have used a number 76 (bloody small) drill bit to drill a navigation light and a formation light bulb into the clear wingtip pieces:

 

And here they are attached to the wing tips after having placed a small dab of paint into each bulb (white for the formation bulb):

 

I decided to let the tailplane elevators droop and so cut them off using a scalpel and after some tidying up (although with this magnification it looks like I haven't done any!) reglued them on:

 

The plane was then sealed with tape and maskol and the panel lines were pre-shaded:

 

First few sprays of Sky (model master enamel):

[pbhawkin]

The undercarriage is quite basic, but is in keeping with the wheel well. So I couldn't resist making them look something like the real thing.
So from the 3 plastic parts supplied with the kit and one PE with the Marabu PE set I added another 10 PE/Brass pieces and 4 plastic pieces to produce this:

 

And with regard to the  cowlings I just received the aftermarket resin pair from RetroWings (RW44133)  and as you can see they have a nice correct curved profile to the front outer edge of the collector ring and also a correct looking front to cowling (they obviously also thought the shape of the kit's cowlings were wrong) :

[Horatio Gruntfuttock]

You are certainly putting in the hard yards with this little tiddler Mr Hawkins. And you don't appear to live all that far from me. We local modellers from around these parts, Bathurst-Orange ( and a couple from Sydney who come up to clear their lungs!), have fairly regular Plonk'n'Plastic weekends - would you be interested in joining us for a very pleasant get-togther the next time we organise one?

[pbhawkin]

Hi Horatio,

Thanks for the compliment and the invite.

Yes it would be great to catch up with some fellow sprue gluers!

A trip to Bathurst is always refreshing.

My email is : pbhawkin at optusnet dot com dot au

[pbhawkin]

I can't believe it is almost a month since I last updated this!
Anyway, here are some pictures taken during the masking and spraying:
Dark Earth (second coat):

 

Result:

 

Masking for Dark Green:

 

Result:

 

close up of the flaps:

[pbhawkin]

After some days of fiddling with touch-ups, weathering etc I have got the guns to this stage (the red covers are small strips of decal):

 

And the other side (prior to landing lights being made):