hendie

Dunno Bill. Looks pretty close to me. Once the other bits are colored in and stickers slapped on I reckon it'll be spot on.

I believe those are facets generated in the STL file. Everything in an STL is created from a number of triangles - even round/circular parts. Try increasing the resolution (number of triangles) of the STL output. This will make the flat area less noticeable.

oooh, this brought back nightmares! nice build though. It certainly looks like a Wessex. - and congratulations for struggling through with it. It's not an easy build by any means.

Oh Ced! You must be feeling poorly. Have you ran out of fnaars and snurfs?

Yup, there are or rather, were a few Pullmans which ended up as restaurants over the years. I'm not sure there's any left now as they tended to just get trashed rather than repaired over the years. The hut is looking very nice, Steve. I can't wait to see the hut furnished with some chairs, a table with some mugs of tea, some half eaten sandwiches, and a pack of cards. You know you gotta do it! 😁

If the full phrase is pretty infuriating then yes. Today's adventures started off innocuously enough with a bit of gentle sanding eliminating some seams. Followed by some more sanding to eliminate some more seams. However, it seems there should be a seam there. Oops. Then here's where things started to go downhill at a vast rate of knots. Oh lookee... lots of glass parts! There's a lot aren't there? Oh well, nothing for it but to jump right in and get started. I removed the windscreen and the canopy top section from the runner tree very, very gently.I then took extreme care removing the excess material down to just the frames themselves. I have a habit of inadvertently gouging clear parts with the razor saw so this time I was EXTRA careful. It worked. But then... oh dear. What? You can't see the problem? How about now? Holy gaping chasms Batman! How did that happen? Once again it was checking over everything to see if I got something out of place. I couldn't find anything wrong. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. This was quite disconcerting, Not to mention infuriating. I was just really getting into enjoying this kit despite it's quirks and foibles. Checking over everything once again I still couldn't find where I'd gone wrong (assuming it was me that had gone wrong, that is). In desperation I cut a few more parts from the tree and taped things into place. What the heck? Look at that gap - that's a good 2mm or thereabouts. Upon forensic investigation it was clear that the instrument panel coaming was the main (but not the only) culprit. It was preventing the windscreen from sitting back closer to the fuselage. However, the instrument panel is located by a slot in the center console (arrowed), which in turn is located on the floor pan by 4 tabs. It can't, literally cannot go anywhere else. The other side is exactly the same. What is very strange is that both gaps are very similar in size and both gaps are parallel sided. It's as if there's a missing frame - OR - the cockpit door is too narrow, OR the windscreen doesn't wrap around enough on both sides. Whatever the root cause. Hendie... we have a problem. One way or another I have to address this. I'm not about to let this kit beat me. Based on what I am seeing though, I am convinced the issue lies with the kit and is not something I've done. Everything located around the windscreen fits okay and all the other panels meet up. It has to be the kit. To cut a long story short - Once I had established the main culprit was the coaming, it was out with the files, the sanding sticks and the knife for some sanding, more sanding , and some scraper action. Darn it. I'd mae such a nice job of getting a nice satin coat on that instrument panel coaming too. Some time later we had got to this stage. I've removed a lot of material from the coaming and also the central spar supporting the windscreen. I've also added a small spacer - the visible piece of white styrene at the bottom of the windscreen, to push the edge of the nose piece upwards slightly. It's not pretty but it seems to be doing the trick, albeit very slowly. It's getting to a point where I think I can work with it. There's still more work to be done though. Luckily, with the gap being parallel sided, I should be able to add a "frame" in that position which will eliminate the gape and disguise the issue. Okay, it won't be accurate, but it will work. First though, I need some positive location to work from. The top piece of the canopy is the starting point, but it needs dipped in floor polish and also sprayed transparent green (or is it blue? I'll need to check). Once that's done I can glue that in place and work from there. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours dealing with this particular issue and that was enough of that for today. I'll take a break over the weekend and attack it again on Monday. So, what else can I do in the meantime? Ah, the tail is a prime candidate. - But, it's also a prime candidate for being snapped off since there are only two tiny little stubs of locating pins to hold it in place. The solution was easy - remove one of the pins and drill it out for some brass rod. A Ø1mm rod should provide plenty of strength. There! Sorted. Yes, I finally glued on the transmission fairing. Thankfully, only at the front cos I was sitting there looking at it when I suddenly realized I hadn't stuck the engines in place. Oops! Luckily there was enough flex for me to edge the engines into place without any collateral damage. Once the front end had hardened up I went to fix the back end and guess what? It wouldn't flex downwards to meet the fuselage! AGAIN! The culprit this time was the circular flange running around the engine, so it was out with the knife again and I sliced the top of the flange off, allowing the fairing to sit down and play nicely with the fuselage. End of play today and we're sitting at this stage. Am I still enjoying it? Well, to be honest, yes. It's definitely not a kit for beginners or for the faint of heart. I find that I have to think of it more as a multiple problem solving exercise as opposed to being a kit that just fits together. You have to plan ahead - and have contingency plans for when those plans don't work. It can be frustrating no doubt, but by the same token it's actually a very rewarding build - when things finally come together. I think I'll end up with a reasonable facsimile of a Z-9B. Not perfect by any means but nothing to be ashamed of either. (I hope!) I'll also have to think about how I intend to display the finished model. Adding all the doors is going to hide a lot of the interior detail. There's an option to have missiles mounted which means removing the back doors. I may go down that path as my helo collection so far is all very peaceful. It'd be nice to have something menacing for a change.

Well, still no 3D printing and believe it or not, another little portion of good old scratchbuilding. Before we get to that though, we have a little bit of a problem to solve. Order of the day: Test fit. Oops! See that little gap I've thoughtfully arrowed for you? It will come as no surprise that that gap should not be there. No way, no how. That little innocuous gap is lifting the forward end of that fairing higher than it should be, which in turn is raising the rear edge of the transmission fairing, which in turn is leaving LOTS of horrible gaps all along the fuselage/transmission seam. While I pondered that, I drilled out the two exhaust/vent thingies pointing out the back as they will be visible once all the fairings are in place. Back to the problem. First, define the problem: there's an unwanted gap. How do we eliminate the gap? Lower the front end. Simple. Except it's not quite as simple as that, is it? It never is. Again, follow the arrow. There's a lip at the top of that panel which sits on top of the firewall. Now, I could cut a notch in the top of the firewall to allow that panel to sit flush on the fuselage. However, the top of that panel would now interfere with the exhaust can. The solution? The entire engine bay needs to be lowered enough to allow that panel to meet up with the fuselage. Simple, no? Well, not, not really. I'm a belt and braces builder and I had glued the sides of the engine bay floor to the fuselage panels so it wasn't going anywhere. At least not without a fight. I have a plan. Choose your weapons... actually, I'll choose both! I used the (bloomin invaluable) scribing tool to scribe a guideline just inside the top of the fuselage on the engine bay floor. Then a few more scribes to make a bit of a slot just big enough to get the saw into. Like so... I then used the saw to cut up to just behind the interior bulkhead, then turned the other way and sawed through the floor all the way to the end. If I held the saw at an angle, the curved blade allowed me to get under those two tubular thingies and reach the back end of the bay floor. I've arrowed the cuts so you can see what I mean. Not as much a cut-and-shut job but more of a cut-and-leave-wide-open. That now allows the back end of the engine bay floor to flex up and down. Feeling pleased with myself I took a break and glued the fire extinguishers in before I forgot all about them. I now felt comfortable enough to be able to glue the two halves of that fairing together - just along the top seam at this stage though. Once that seam had cured up it was time to put my theory to the test - would I have enough flex and would it stay in position once glued? A little bit of clamping action was required. Well...whaddya know? It worked! A slight intermission. Perusing the BM threads over the last few days, I noted that a bunch of folks had bought some nice little tools - and I got jealous. So I printed some. Well, two. For years I've been very lax and just had all my micromesh pads lying in a container, which was a real pain as I always had to sort through them to find the one I wanted, and I could never remember the color coding for grit size either. Well, now I'm sorted. I have a nice little micromesh stand which holds them all nicely in order so I can just grab what I need, when I need it. Also, I printed off a nice little MicroSet/Sol stand which will hopefully prevent me from knocking them over in future - I even labeled them! When I get 10 minutes I'll draw up a little stand for the TET as I've knocked that over a few times in the past as well. Intermission over. I hope you enjoyed your ice cream and Kia-Ora. Back to that top fairing now. It's not over yet by any means. Further test fitting showed that the top fairing still would not sit flush with the fuselage, especially when this panel was in place. If you look closely you'll see that I've also had to remove quite a bit from the top of the front firewall. Eventually, with enough test fitting, scraping and filing, I got the top fairing to sit where it should actually sit. It's all a bit weird really. I did a dry fit with the cabin doors and the cabin doors are just a smidgin too high for the available gap - that means the cabin roof should actually sit a bit higher than I currently have it. However, if it sat higher, then those gaps seen earlier would have been larger. Remember that internal bulkhead where I had to remove 1.5mm from the bottom edge to close another gap? It would appear that I should also have removed a millimeter or so from the top edge as well. Nevermind, it appears we are now getting somewhere. On to more mundane things. The nose. I took the opportunity to add a bit more weight inside the nose just to be on the safe side. I also added a small tab on the top edge as there's an intake just forward of the windscreen and it was possible to see inside and see all the liquid gravity when the nose cone was in place. Now you can't! Let's take a step back and see where we are now. Oooh look mum... a helicopter. I have to say that I'm really enjoying this build. There's a lot of issues, sure, but nothing insurmountable - provided you don't mind doing a lot of test fitting and lots of fettling. It's definitely a real puzzler of a kit. I'm now at a stage where I'm almost ready to fit that top fairing but first there's a bunch of parts needing stuck together and greeblifying. I think most companies would have given you two fuselage halves (including the fairing) and left it at that. Not Kitty Hawk. Not even close. These two panels need gluing up first, then the seams need to get filled and smoothed off. While there was plenty access I added a few holes (after checking my references!). I counter drilled on the reverse side with a larger drill bit so anyone peering up close wouldn't think "oh it's just a hole drilled through a thick piece of plastic" and hopefully have given it more of a fuselage skin aspect. There some very obvious fasteners and what looks to be some kind of filler cap recessed in the front end of that fairing so I followed the same method I used above. The plastic was very thick at this area so I winged it - I drilled a Ø1.5mm thru hole, then counter drilling (Ø2.5mm) on the reverse face again, then gluing in a slice of (Ø2mm) plastic rod. That meant that the Ø2mm rod sat back from the hole slightly, and I could glue a Ø0.6mm piece of rod. Hey presto... recessed filler cap. I may have mentioned in passing that sometimes the instructions can be a little confusing. Sometimes very confusing. I was checking my references again and noticed that the rear door on the Sek Kong example was a lot narrower that what appeared on my build. I spent an age trying to figure out where I had gone wrong - had I fitted the fuselage panel too far back? Had I fitted the wrong panel? (There are three different versions of this panel supplied in the kit!). Nope. The part number was correct... what was going on. Then I spotted it. There was a second part number hiding away, and another couple of panel extensions hiding away on another runner tree. Panic over, I painted the inside of the panels and got them fitted, along with the bottom door runner. That's more like it. Last up for todays thrilling episode is yet another dry fit. I posted this shot as it shows the top fairing fasteners and filler cap off better. The fasteners were done by drilling some Ø0.6mm thru holes, then pushing a piece of Ø0.6mm rod into the hole but keeping it just slightly back from the outer edge, then slapping some superglue on the back side to hold it in place. The rear door top runner has also been added here. There's a bit of a gap present but that can be filled easily enough. Given the gaps I started with earlier, I'll take that any day of the week. It looks even better from further away! This is where we are now at. I'm quite pleased with how those panel gaps at the fuselage/fairing seam are looking. I can definitely work with those. Yes, I'm still avoiding the clear parts but I know I'll have to get to them soon enough. I wonder what awaits me in the next episode?

What scrappy brush painted base coat? Dammit! Are my eyes going as well now? She's looking well dromedary now Johnny.

I doubt it. Like most things, it has its limitations. I was an early adopter of 3D printing and have used it for years - and love it. However, on my latest build I've gone back to "traditional" scratch building as for some of the details, 3D printing is just not a suitable medium. Some will embrace 3D printing, some will detest it. It's all down to taste and individual requirements, and in some cases, affordability. Only when its used for rapid prototyping. I know of at least two Healthcare device manufacturers currently using 3D printed parts in their commercial devices (and have been for several years). No doubt there are many more. 3D printing is still in its development phase. There's technology leaps and enhancements on an almost monthly basis, and as more materials (resins) are developed then more companies will no doubt adopt the technology when it becomes appropriate. The main issue at the moment is that the technology is so new that "engineering" resins can be expensive but this is changing as their use becomes more widespread. Material properties are also being tweaked and developed to align with intended use. As I mentioned above - material properties are improving all the time as requirements dictate. Just a different set of skills is all. What it does do without question, is open up a whole new world of opportunity. For example, I could never have had a 1/48 Wapiti without the printer (or the software and skills) - though some elements are still scratch built. and this Whirlwind is a mixture of 3D printing (i.e. rotor head and wheels) and a bunch of traditional scratch building - the winch, the nose and nose filter, with home vacuformed windscreen.

Oh look... it's a helicopter! Well it's starting to take on that helicoptery shape which is good news. I think its time to start some of the exciting stuff now. I've had enough of the dry fitting and faffing about. It's time for having some fun now. Lets begin with some basic scratch building. According to my reference shots, there is some pipework and wotnots in the undercarriage bays. It seems that every shot I have is slightly different, but since no-one knows what the inside of these bays looks like, I'm just going to make it up as I go along... but not too far from reality I hope. Some big ducting to begin with. Some cover of some sort by the looks of the reference photo. A squirt of pale blue to add some color, followed by a few black wires and with some stainless wire pretending to be hydraulic lines. Then I finally got around to gluing on the first of the fuselage panels. (the tail is just taped on to help with alignment). One of the panels was just slightly misaligned at the back end so some yoga clamping action was required. Things are starting to take shape now. A test fit of the tail pylon showed that the sides weren't quite meeting up so a short session of scraping action was necessary. and more glue, and more clamping, and we have another part almost ready to the assembly line. First though, we have to add the tail boom. This took quite a bit of fettling to get a good fit - or at least as good as I could get. Test fitting of ALL parts really is the order of the day with this kit. While the engineering is weird, sometimes you really see where they were coming from. This piece attaches to the pillar between the front and rear cabin - providing a nice return on the pillar and adding just that little extra bit of interest. But like everything else, it needed fettling. I had to cut down the width and height of the locating tabs, and remove a smidgin from both the top end and the bottom end to get it to fit. Even then, it still sat proud so more scraping action on the reverse to thin it down and get it to sit back properly. Evident in the shot above is the fact that I also got around to fitting the instrument panel and connecting up the framing of the front end, including adding the cabin roof section. Everything, but everything in this kit requires some form of fettling. Thankfully it's nothing too difficult, and actually quite enjoyable to some extent. While the tail boom was curing up I had a shufty to see what other jobs could be done as I didn't really want to chance disturbing the tail boom until it was set. The next set of panels to go on are the back end of the transmission housing, BUT it would be impossible to paint the black portion with the exhausts in place so those were painted up. Once they are glued in position I know I'll have some seams to get rid of but it will be a lot easier to do the touch ups (if I am careful when sanding) than it would to try and paint that black section once it's all in place and the exhausts are in the way. That little interlude was enough time for the tail boom to set up so it was now time to fit the tail pylon. This joint was not the best by any means but was the best I could manage. A little clean up will be required but nothing too drastic. I wish I had remembered to clean the seams inside the fenestron though - it would have been a lot easier if it wasn't attached. We're definitely talking helicopter shape now. The tail/fuselage seam has me pondering. It's a nice, neat seam, but the outer edges of both sections were ever so slightly rounded (out of the mold) so the seam appears larger than it should. I'm not sure whether to add a smidgen of filler or just leave well alone. I'll wait until it's all got a coat of primer then make a decision on that I think. This next part had me flummoxed for a while. The forward section of the fuselage/nose is a gnats baw hair too narrow for the fuselage front end. It fits adequately on the starboard side but there's a definite step on the port side (arrowed). It's difficult to use some form of wedge to open it up as the sides are tapered and curved. The instrument panel coaming is also (I believe) preventing it from sitting down fully. There are two very small tabs on the bottom of the part which locate in a slot made by the fuselage bottom and the floor section. When I eventually figured it out the solution was to open up the width of the slot towards the outer skin, then add a spacer from scrap styrene. I also had to scrape the top of the forward bulkhead to allow the panel to sit flush with the lower section. Not to mention removing as much as I could from the front of the instrument coaming, and scraping/chamfering the inside of the part as much as I could. There's still a very slight step even after adding the spacer but it's the kind of step you can only really feel with your fingernail so a little bit of judicious sanding will take care of that. So far everything seems to be going according to plan. If the plan includes inordinate amounts of dry fitting, fettling, scraping, and swearing that is. The good news is that so far there have been no roadblocks or death blows. However, I still have to break out the clear parts. I have been blatantly avoiding going anywhere near those so far. I think the time has come though, and that part, I am not looking forward to. I must remember to test the CoG in the next session to make sure I have enough weight in there. I know the paint job on this build is going to be a bit of a nightmare but there's part of me actually looking forward to it - and painting is normally a job I don't like.

Thanks for the motivational comments folks - it really helps keep the mojo bubbling. Carrying on from our last episode, an easy job up first was fitting the two seat belt reels on the back of the pilots seats. After that, things got progressively harder. Production started on the seat belts. That was the easiest part - fitting them was incredibly time consuming and fiddly. First two belts in place. Then some hours later the troops belts are all fitted. That probably took me in the region of 2 to 3 hours to get those all in place, secured and some paint touch ups. A quick side shot. I just don't think you can get that sort of detail with PE belts. (at least I can't). I thought of taking a break from seat belts but this is probably the hardest and most frustrating part of the build so I decided to carry on and just get the job over and done with. Manufacture of the pilots belts began rather uneventfully. I managed to find a couple of small PE discs and stuck a slice of styrene rod on top to create the 5 point buckle. Then got absorbed into the proceedings and completely omitted to take any more photos of the process. Eventually though, the two pilots seat harnesses were completed. I'm not entirely happy with the seat harness on the port side as the buckles aren't even, but the superglue grabbed too quickly, and by that point I had so much time and effort invested in the harness I wasn't going to risk destroying it and having to start again. The harnesses are nowhere near accurate, but they have 5 straps, a 5 point buckle and a couple of adjustment buckles so they'll do the job this time around. Soul destroying as that job may be, adding harnesses and belts really does add a lot of visual interest. Remember this gap? The gap that I wasn't sure should be there or not? Well, after a ridiculous amount of faffing about trying to dry fit parts and get them to stay together I finally determined that the gap should not be there. I ended up removing around 1.5mm from the bottom of that bulkhead. Dry fitting on this kit is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of the parts - especially the fuselage panels do not have any positive location features - they're all dependant upon aligning and mating with adjacent panels. Since I had to remove a portion from the bottom of the bulkhead it had no way of positively locating with its respective slots in the floor. Actually it never had any locating tabs from the get-go anyways. The only way I could get a final location and orientation for the bulkhead was to come up with this "jig" arrangement. The bulkhead is now glued in position. The side panels attached the bulkhead locate with a small lip on top of the wheel bays - but - are free to move forward and backward. The only way to positively locate those two panels was to tape on the tail cone which butts up against the bottom of the fuselage, make sure the panels are all butted up against each other as tight as possible, slap on some glue and hope for the best. A quick diversion saw the MRGB glued in position. Having that recalcitrant bulkhead finally fixed in position allowed me to add the trans deck floor which in turn allowed me to add the fuselage arch. There was no way that clamps were ever going to work in holding this together so it was all down to good old tube cement for strength, masking tape to pull it all together and a few strategic drops of cyano to stop things from moving around while the tube cement cures. A quick dry fit of the exhausts to ensure its all going to fit together later. The exhaust cans were painted with Alclad pale burnt metal, a smidgin of exhaust manifold at the end, then some very watered down transparent blue in the transition area - which doesn't show up at all in this photo. I finished off as much detail painting as I'm going to do on the overhead console, but did add a small light (scratchbuilt old style) and two (throttle?) levers and slapped some yellow paint on them. Then it was back to yet more dry fitting, this time to ensure that the front end is all going to come together and play nicely. At least the light and throttle levers should be visible when it's all buttoned up. Thoughts at this point? Overall I am really enjoying the build. It is certainly not a kit for a beginner and you need a lot of patience. Dry fitting is essential though awkward and sometimes frustrating. To be honest I am surprised that Kitty Hawk have gone to such great lengths to provide all that extra detail when it's all enclosed behind panel work. It must have easily doubled the tooling cost. I think there's something like 10 or 11 runner trees. It's great value for money at less than $50 delivered, and this would be a great kit for someone who wanted to open up the panels and give it the full bling treatment. I'm kind of kicking myself for not going down that route now.

He was my hero for years - then he had to go and ruin it. It's a great quote though so I'm still going to use it. It certainly is - especially when they mis-number the parts in the instructions. I think this is the model with the greatest parts count I've ever come across. It most certainly will be Pappy. I had a quick browse and you already solved one problem for me - I'll dig into it more later. me or him? My mistake, he's already had one. Ooohh goodies. Look what arrived in the mail yesterday evening. Another installment of the Hendie does Sek Kong series. But back to the current incumbent. Seats were colored in. I only have one photo of the Z-9B with doors open and surprisingly (to me anyway), they show blue seats. Quite a bright blue in fact. Even the cabin has big comfy chairs for the troops. Those PLAAF chaps certainly get to fly in comfort. The photo was taken at a Sek Kong open day so I wonder if the PLAAF fitted nice comfy chairs all round just for that show to deceive impress the locals? Whatever, it's the only photo I have so I'm going with it. In preparation for the seats, the floor got a bit of a clean. Not much, but a bit. I feel I should have taken more off but it's too late now as varnish has been applied. Maybe it will tone down with all the other gizzits in place, he says hopefully. Ehhrrrr, not really. The seats are a bit overdone as well. I just can't get the hang of this weathering malarkey at all. Johnny makes it look so easy but it's a lot harder than it looks. I guess this is where I can state that assembly has finally begun. Seats now glued in, as is the center console, instrument console, and front bulkhead. I took the opportunity to add some more liquid gravity inside the center console before it was laid to rest. Shot from the front. Apparently the Z-9B can hold up to 10 troops. Obviously as you can see here, Kitty Hawk only provide 8 troop seats. I'm guessing two of them can either sit on the floor or perhaps there's a couple of jump seats that fit in behind that front row? Who knows. Now begins the part I really dislike about doing helicopters... seat belts. Needs must be however and I may as well get on with it. Strangely, Kitty Hawk provide seat belts for the troop seats - but they only provide enough to do 6 troop seats. What the heck? It doesn't really matter that much as I dislike PE seat belts. I feel they never look natural enough, or perhaps that's just another shortfall in my skillset. Anyway, I have a method which works for me so I'll stick with that. Kitty Hawk do provide PE seat belts for both pilots, but they've omitted the seat belt reel which is located on the back of the pilots seats. Here we go... abit of old fashioned scratch building. They've now been sent off to the paint shop. Meanwhile I can get started on the really soul destroying part, the troop seat belts. As I have no information whatsoever on the interior, I'm just going with boring old black'ish colored belts. It may look rough here but those belts are only 1mm wide. I've used my old fall back here - painted ciggy wrapper paper. It takes paint well, and hold its shape easily. It's also lightly textured so from viewing distance it appears fabric(y) So, belt from ciggy wrapper and buckle from 0.25 thick styrene cut into 1 x 1.5mm rectangles and sprayed polished aluminum. That one shown above is just the prototype. I'll use that to get lengths, then make up a batch to do the rest of the seats. In between times, I'll tackle the pilots seats to alleviate the boredom. I think you may be correct there Pappy, but I'll reserve judgement until I've got a bit further into the assembly sequence.

Nice work Johnny. I like the effect, subtle though it is. Definitely worth persevering with.

Slowly, slowly catchee Changhe as they say. The weekend interfered with progress somewhat but things are getting back on track now. The instructions dictated that I add some weight to the front end though very thoughtfully did not specify an actual value in grams, ounces, or batman's. (yes, Batman is a measurement of weight - go look it up!) Anyhoos, weight was added in the form of Liquid Gravity and 2 part epoxy. I'm not sure if this is enough but I have a plan to add more in Operation Overkill later. Next operation was to glue the floor to the bottom of the fuselage. I took a wild stab in the dark that this would not detrimentally affect assembly later. The instructions actually have you adding the undercarriage before this stage but we all know what happens there, don't we folks? Back to the interior. I figured since that is the most time consuming I may as well try and get that out of the way. The cockpit comes with a very nice looking instrument panel in PE. Several bits of PE in fact. Now, since I am doing a Z-9B it appears I need PE parts 1, 2, & 4 (x2). I know this is a horrible photo, but bear with me. Parts 1, 2, & 4 (x2) are on the top left of the PE fret. Take a squint. I spent absolutely ages staring at this trying to figure it out. Part 4 is far too large to fit in the space provided on Part 1, - and it has what appeared to be 4 tabs, but no mention of folding anywhere. Neither are there any fold lines on the part, and the diagram shows what is essentially a flat part. Eventually the penny dropped when I noticed that two of the tabs were angled - yes, it has to be folded. Why couldn't they just state that somewhere? I used some parallel pliers to do the folding - these parts were tiny! Folding sides 1 & 2 was straightforward. Folding side 3 was difficult and side 4 was nigh on impossible... until I had a eureka moment. I cut off one of the plastic identifiers on the runner and cut that to fit inside the "square". That allowed me to grip the part with tweezers and fold that last side up into place. Having no etched fold line meant that I couldn't get nice neat bends, but I think I got to where it needed to be. Once folded I filled the void in the back with putty. Then, when I was giving a last gentle squeeze with the pliers to square things up - Oops! Step away, step away. I'll come back to that later. As I have bemoaned previously, Kitty Hawk have made some interesting if not downright bizarre engineering design decisions. This next part is one of them. Can you guess what it is yet? (are we allowed to say that these days?) It's the main rotor gearbox. No, honestly. It is. Things aren't helped by the fact that there were huge gates on every part. Clearances aren't and the parts don't slip into each other as intended. The part on the extreme left is the "starting point" and it's supposed to have two pins on it as they align the next part which then aligns the next part, which in turn aligns the next part and so on. No pins! It was a short shot. Much scraping, filing, and cursing later we have a messy horrible looking blob of plastic. As horrible as it looks, once the rest of the assembly is, ehrrr... assembled, it doesn't look too bad. 14 parts later... Dammit! Another ghost posting and I'm only halfway through... hold on... After the MRGB it was time for some light entertainment so I calmed myself by starting to thin down the exhaust cans. As supplied on right, and partially thinned on left. Enough of that - back to the insides again. The kit supplied rudder(yaw) pedals were okay'ish, but a bit bland. They needed some bling. So, checking my references I found that the Dauphin rudder pedal are quite complicated little affairs. Fun time. Bits of plastic and wire were added for that extra bling effect. ... then glued in position - after having to howk out the location slots once again. I haven't found a tab and slot that actually fits yet without modification. From the reverse side Hydraulic lines were added from some 0.2mm diameter stainless wire as seen in this unedited unglamorous close up. I mixed some steel and some brass paint to color in the valves/cylinders. Still on the internals but external to the cockpit, it's time to start on the trans deck. Kitty Hawk have you paint the whole thing in that colorless mid grey - which I did. Then realized that there would be firewalls up in this engine area so I colored it in a bit differently. The base color was a polished aluminum, followed by a splash of titanium gold and finished off with some black/grey aimed at the corners and a couple of random areas. I know I should have taken care of those ejector pin marks and the parting lines but this entire area gets completely covered (and I forgot!) It starts to build up into a nice little assembly. The main rotor gearbox was given a good old coloring in. I didn't have the appropriate color so mixed some blue and grey as the description on the instructions was bluish grey. Or was it greyish blue? That was followed by a fun little masking job. These parts were supposed to be colored in "gold" according to the instructions but I felt that would be a bit gaudy so went for titanium gold instead. Unmasking revealed this. ..which fits on here - or will do after I've opened up the locating hole and shaved the inside of the gearbox so it will fit on the floor instead of hovering above it like an impatient Dalek. Kitty Hawk actually provide a rather nice palette for anyone wishing to open this up and add all the extra gubbinses and wotnots. And that may also disguise a lot of the fit issues of the fuselage panels - which I haven't got to yet. Again, avoiding any of yer akchul assembly of the body of this helo I opted to give it a body swerve and do some detail painting instead. Still in progress but you get the picture... fuzzy though it is. Look @giemme - paint AND decals and we're still on page 1! Remember that little oopsie earlier with the instrument panel box thing? Well, I flatted it out with the parallel pliers and started it all over again and it turned out okay. I almost had a disaster with the IP decal though - part of it folded on me when I was trying to position it over those box affairs and it left a nasty white patch that I couldn't get rid of. I disguised it by slapping another instrument decal over it - it's the third gauge from bottom on the extreme right. I think I got away with it. Another shot from a different angle. I'm not sure bout the grey rectangle thing I painted. That may have to go. (All of this is just dry fitted at the moment.) This afternoons session was completed when I got desperate for a cup of coffee so I finished off by slapping some Flory's over the cabin floor - which I may come to regret later. Yes, I still have to wipe all the grubby stuff off. You may also noted that some seats have been colored in but I forgot to take any photos of them. You'll just need to wait until next time. So far, so good. No major debacles or obstruction - aside from my own ham-fistedness that is. I have to say that despite the reviews I've read, I'm enjoying this kit quite a bit. That's last statement is just bound to have jinxed me, hasn't it?

phenomenal painting Johnny. Very soul destroying.