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The most prominent part of the cockpit is of course the instrument panel. The initial strategy was to drill holes in a thin plastic/brass sheet and put something resembling the gauges behind it, but recalling how hard it was to get this good during the build of my P-47 I reconsidered. I decided to instead mill holes in a thicker material and punch put some gauges which are then dropped into the openings, hopefully giving me some more control of the alignment. First the gauges, which were a little of a challenge. Although I had some images of the gauges themselves I couldn't first figure out how to get them to scale - my printer simply didn't have enough resolution for an acceptable result. But what if I photograph an overscaled version of the instrument panel on film and use the negative directly? That could be worth a try, and by coincidence I also photograph with an old-school (well, from the 1980s-90s) large format camera from time to time. An advantage here is that the camera focuses on a ground glass (what you see is exactly what you get, also the measurements) which means I can measure the real size of the instrument panel directly and photograph it to scale. I made sure to get a bunch of instrument panels on one 4x5 inch sheet and one trial version is shown below. The actual image is on the back of a negative so I will have the "glass" for free. Some white color painted behind accentuates the gauges. The holes are just punching tryouts - the plastic in the negative is quite sturdy so I wanted to make sure it's doable before continuing. Two new punches were turned to my home made punch and die set. Luckily only two sizes are needed, one is on the picture. The instrument panel ended up being milled and cut from 1 mm acrylic. Using a thicker plastic makes it more rigid and the risk of breaking anything when cutting the holes is mitigated. A few attempts were made and the version to the far right was the best. The holes for the big instruments turned out to be 2 mm, which was good since a milling bit could then be used for cutting. The milling bit puts a little less stress on the material than a drill bit does. The selected panel was roughly cut and then patiently filed down to the right dimensions. I refrained from power tools this time - they are faster, but one mistake and you need to start all over again... The result, ready for some extra detailing and paint before the gauges are being dropped in. As seen I had to shim one side a little in the end to get the measurements right.

The rudder got some 0.3 mm copper wire added in the groves that should serve as a "ribs". Everything was glued with CA and the wire was eventually cut to length. The trim rudder was also scribed at this stage. With the wire in place the rudder was covered several times with an automotive spray filler, then sanded down to give the impression of a framework structure covered in fabric. The trim rudder was defined once again and in the end I sprayed everything with some Tamiya primer to check the result. Below everything dry-fitted to the fin and fuselage. As can be seen both the fin and fuselage needs their share of surface/gap-filling work. However, there should be a smooth line from the canopy down to the fin, so in order to start I also need to fit the canopy, and in order to fit the canopy I better complete the interior first since the space left for this work will otherwise be very limitied. Hence I need to fix a chair, an instrument panel and a few other stuff... Well, it at least gave me a reason to get the interior parts I have so far into their final place. So, on to some milling, drilling and vac-forming (!) to see if the interior can get a little more busy!

Yes, it's a Proxxon BS/E. I have a dedicated holder for it which can be clamped in a vise, so I'm holding the part while letting the sander be stationary. In the beginning I tried the belt sander handheld but it was more difficult. I am actually looking for a bigger one that has a wider belt and a board to support more precise angles, so basically in the other direction from where you are looking. Probably you can make use of both Since I still haven't found the "right" belt sander (maybe a disc sander could be something) I'm continuing with this setup in the meantime. So far it has got the job done and it's not a too heavy investment.

The acrylic transformed successfully into a rudder, which is pictured below during one of the first dry-fittings with the fin and the body. The fin that I had attached to the body earlier had to be slightly redone as it ended up leaning a little and with somewhat wrong dimensions. The fin was skinned with 0.3 mm styrene sheet, and the whole rear area of the fuselage was formed into a "flowing" shape with some (careful) use of the belt sander. The rudder was in orginial covered with fabric. The frames underneath the fabric will be done in a classical manner with thin wire that is covered with either filler or cyano and then sanded into shape. Some groves were scribed for the wires with the aid of a spare piece of acryclic sheet which served as a ruler. A two-thirds finalized piece. Next step will be to scribe the trim rudder, which has been marked out, and fix the wire thing.

It has been a while since the last update and the project has also moved slowly during the autumn, but it hasn't been completely standstill. The cockpit turned out to be a little more time consuming than first expected, but now at least the cockpit side walls may get their final place soon. Time has been spent on creating boxes and wheels and also some custom tooling, mainly punches of different sizes of which one of the variants can be seen at the top of the second photo. Some work is still left - the three holes in the plate should for example get some kind of gauges in them - but the main painting and detailing has been done. The structure in the rear area of the cockpit, behind the pilot, has been completed together with the tubing framework that is visible around the cockpit opening. Some adjustments are still left. To get some variation in work I have in parallell started to look into the bigger parts around the fuselage, especially around the tail but also around the rear part of the canopy. The top of the fuselage should so to say follow one smooth line from just behind the pilot's seat down to where the fin starts, so it needs to be sorted out as a whole. First step was to align everything in the jig again. A surface gauge is used to mark out various heights around the fuselage and make sure that they end up in the same places on both sides. The canopy has some fitting issues at the bottom (not as big as it may seem in the picture, though, but it's still there). At the bottom of the fuselage the plastic had somehow "sunken" during the casting and created a dent. The white plasticard is there to build up the correct shape again. It has been roughly sanded but the final finish will be done later as this is not the only part where some finishing filler will be needed... The gap in the canopy is luckily below the windows, in the frame, so a piece of plasticard has been added also here. It will be sanded to shape and fitted before everything is being polished up. To position the fin some holes for guiding pins were drilled and the pins were glued The fin itself was formed from a piece of hardwood with the help of a belt sander. It's here seen dry-fitted and next step is to cover it with 0,4 mm plasticard. The rudder will be formed from an acrylic block, or at least that is the plan. I only had 5 mm acrylic which turned out to be on the thin end so two pieces has been glued together with superglue and is now waiting for the belt sander. Will get back with an update, hopefully in less than six months

On to the ”busy cockpit” which isn’t less busy than it first looked. Currently I’m working with creating all the boxes and parts from acrylic and brass. Measures are a mix of drawings and eyeballing, and as much as possible is created with the milling machine. The bigger crank on the lower left part here (which is the most complex part in the cockpit except for the instrument panel) was filed from a piece of brass, and a piece of brass tubing was cut to length to form the handle. After a first layer of paint: One of the most notable parts of the cockpit is the part of the fuselage tubing framework, which is visible from above on the cockpit sides. 0.5 mm brass wire was laid out in a pattern and then soldered. Some clean up and fine tuning left. The angles of the frame is correct but the fuselage is not - om the model the cockpit opening is widening a little towards the front of the aircraft. This is not really accurate since the original cockpit opening was almost square, but when I realized the error I decided to ignore it as it would be too hard to fix (and after all not very notable). The frame will be adjusted to fit the model of course, and also the small gap in the soldering will be sorted out.

Behind the pilot's seat was a tube structure that (at least on later versions) housed a gun camera. The tube structure was draped in canvas or similar. My initial plan was to create a master for this shape and then vac form the part, but after realizing that the corners of this thing were sharp rather than soft I changed my mind and instead went with skinning the master with plastic sheet. The master with the basic shape was formed from balsa wood with a belt sander. Skinning in progress. 0.4 mm plastic sheet was used and any gaps (which could probably have been prevented completely by more careful cutting of the plastic sheet) was filled with CA/Baking soda mixture and then sanded to a final shape. This piece could have been made by acrylic or other plastic directly, omitting the skinning step, but I didn't have any plastic with these dimensions. The structure mounted... ...and finally the top was filed down for a smooth fit with the canopy (although this is not final). The J22 cockpit was not a super clean setup as I have shown in an earlier post (photo below by Magnus Fridsell at IPMS Stockholm - a lot of photos I use are available at their page). I've started out with the tubing structure, a "cross" which is barely visible in the picture below, as well as the map storage which is the big box in the middle of the picture. The tubing structure was simply soldered from 1 mm brass wire, on a jig that was not pretty but that did the job. The parts, one for each side of the cockpit, were cleaned up, primed, and will be cleaned up little again... The map pocket was a bit of a challenge due to the many holes in it. This would have been a perfect PE part but photo etching is a bit beyond me at the moment, even if it could be an option in the future. I decided to do this the hard way instead by putting a 0.3 mm drill bit into the milling machine and, well, start drilling. First I went with plastic sheet as I thought this should be easier to work with, but the only thing coming out of this was that my (only) 0.3 mm drill bit died at hole 30 or so. I went with plan B with a 0.4 mm drill (like if anyone will ever notice) and 0.25 mm brass. Ca 400 drills later (for real!) i finally had a part. One or two rows were offset but in the end it turned out I could cut them away anyway. The box itself was made from plastic sheet. They need a first painting before being glued together, or the paint will not reach the interior of the box. Hence I need to leave this as a teaser as I am saving up parts for a bigger painting session later.

The new plug turned out to be more successful. There are still challenges - you need to get a decent pull while vac-forming, without too many bubbles and distortions, and the dry-fitting require some careful patience. Take too much, and you need to start all over again. First I cut the canopy out roughly with a dremel saw and then continued with a belt sander to get close to the final shape. The last millimeter is better done by hand to prevent accidents... The windscreen was formed with the help of a sand paper attached to the fuselage. Acrylic is hard and it takes a while to sand it by hand. After a lot of work (this was really a next level dry-fitting experience...) everything fitted as it should. The three parts come from three different moulds, so I'm quite happy I managed to fit them that well together. The center part will of course be displayed open on the finished model, so I don't need the parts to fit down to the thousand. I noticed that the light in these pictures revealed that the surface finish around the fuselage slots still leaves a lot to wish for. I hope I will be able to improve that. The finish of the canopy is of course coarse straight from the mold som they will be sanded and polished later (I already started with the aft part). I made a template from cardboard to check the outlines of the canopy. It's a little too high at the front, but I'll wait a little to see if I should try to improve it or rather leave it as is - were it not for the template it would easily pass. The important thing is that the canopy is now fitted so that I can start with what should be underneath!

Work with the canopy master has continued. After a few tests I found that hardwood and polyester filler were definitely materials to prefer over acrylic resin when making the plug (stay off the the spray filler, though - it didn't really stand the heat from the acrylic and stuck to the canopy part). With acrylic resin you can polish up an extremely good surface finish, but it comes at the price of additional complex steps in the making of the plug. The test shots also revealed that the plug had been too short all the time, not being long enough to properly recreate the windshield. Thus the plug was extended with some additional wood and reshaped. The small joint between the parts is also on the vac formed part but it's not worse than it can be sanded away. Mould from the new plug to the right, I have already started to do the sanding. The version to the left is an earlier attempt and the problem with the short front part can be seen in comparison. The new mould to the right appears much wider, which it also is, but this in part an illusion since the height of that part hasn't been adjusted yet. Another issue was that the straigth cut that earlier finished the rear end of the plug created a lot of stress on the moulded part, giving rise to cracks that easily spread while separating the vac formed acrylic from the plug. Hence also a rear part was added to the plug and given a rough shape. Surface finish was not a thing here but the solution was purely mechanical - to give the plastic a more natural curve to be formed against. I haven't really ran into this problem earlier since my previous experiments with vac forming canopies have been with natural drop shapes (more exactly a P-51D) where this problem does not show up. So now the canopy is in a state where it should be fitted to the whole. The canopy will be in an open position on the final model and the canopy needs to be divided into three parts. Since some if it is lost in the cutting process I will need at least one more successful mould. Hopefully my stock of acrylic sheets will suffice (acrylic easily overheat...) and hopefully the 1 mm thickness will continue to be proven enough. After all a 1,5 mm sheet would make me feel more secure as the 1 mm almost ends up a little too thin.

Yes, that's definitely an easier method and I realized it could have been used in my case as well, although with some extra steps with some vac forming and a rethink on the arrangement. Brass is good since it can be cut with precision and is resistant to sanding (you won't sand it through in the first place), but you need to figure out how to cut it first, and the resistance against sanding also works in the other direction - it can be hard to get it flush with the fuselage. But now we have live examples of both methods

Last weeks have involved a lot of head-scratching. First, the canopy. The first master had to be discarded due to the crack that emerged during the mould, and at a closer inspection there were also some problems with the shape, not only the fitting against the fuselage. Also the front and top of the master was a little too rounded to resemble the original. So, away with version 1 (to be honest that was more or less expected) and on to version 2. This time I started off with hardwood, hoping to be able to skip the moulding step later. Below is the start where the basic shape has been defined and some lines have been marked just to get some kind of feeling. During the work with the canopy master it became evident that it was necessary to finally decide on the cockpit opening. For example It turned out that I had been a little too energic while cutting out the front part, and all around I had to better define the border between the cockpit and the canopy. Plasticard was added all over and sanded to shape. The front part will later be further refined as it will eventually hold a ”dashboard” under the canopy, but for now it’s more to get the outer lines correct. In the picture above you can also spot my other challenge - the slots that should be located on the side of the fuselage just ahead and below of the cockpit. They are marked in the picture of the original below and I have for some time struggled with how I should get them right. Realizing these slots were more complicated than they first looked and could be a real obstacle I decided to put the canopy away for a while and try to sort out this problem instead. The method with moulding the fuselage created some extra difficulties here since the plastic is thick and cannot easily be cut open, and even if it could it would have been very hard to get the shapes right - the slots are half-rounded at the top and the bottom. They are also not just holes in the fuselage but should have an inner wall behind them, about 1 mm in or so at this scale. To start with roughly milled out the area in the fuselage, being careful not to cut through since it would have destroyed the inside cockpit walls (I managed anyway, hence the small plasticard sheet below, but no real damage). Later I enlarged the opening a little, now using the belt sander. You’re pushing it a little with a milling machine - one mistake and you have milled away half of the fuselage… The idea was to build a ”box”, resembling the inner wall, and cover it on the outside with a panel where I would cut a hole with the correct shape, and then fair it all in (yes, I know this would have been easier to do before merging the fuselage halves, but sometimes planning doesn’t go as… planned). The panel needs to be thin as it was simply a single plate in the original, yet resistant to sanding as it should be faired in. I realized that plasticard had a high risk of being sanded through and that it couldn’t provide the precision needed, so I went for sheet brass instead. The ”slots” were cut out with a 1mm mill bit. The ”boxes” were then build up with plasticard and sanded down to follow the curvature of the fuselage, on both sides. The brass was then added and faired in with automotive filler, plasticard and spray fillers. The result, under a quick layer of primer. First impression is that the openings may be a bit overscaled, but if that turns out to be unacceptable it can be adjusted by shimming with some plastic at the front. I will wait until a later stage when I see the whole. The interior of the slots will be sprayed grey-something when I get the airbrush right, and further improvements can always be done to the surface finish. The slots are in place, though, and when it comes to surface finish there will be so much more happening in this area with the canopy, wings and front bulkhead that I better wait with taking action. A lot of work to get this right and in retrospect the best thing to do would probably have been to leave out a recess for this already in the fuselage masters, then vac-form this part to follow the fuselage curvature and the fair it in after the slots had been cut out. I will remember that next time... During the work I have also continued with the canopy master. Let’s see if this one cuts it or if I need to go with a 3.0… However, with the fuselages slots finally solved I will be able to alter the canopy master with some more stimulating work with the interior

The one thing I want to clear out at an early stage is the hood, that needs to be vac formed. First, this is one of the single most time consuming (and frustrating) parts of the build, and second the hood is an integrated part of the J22 body and is more ore less needed to finalize the fuselage shape. The hood being integrated into the fuselage also makes it a more complicated part than a bubble hood, as it needs to be trimmed in more than one dimension, posing higher demands on precision. But off we go. I have one of these dental vac forming machines which makes life a little easier, but only a little. I start with creating a master, as usual by building up a skeleton with frames. The frames are then filled with body filler, which dries into a hard surface yet easy to sand into shape. The red markings on the frame is there to tell me where to stop sanding. From this I get a prototype, but it is not hard enough to use as a plug for the vac forming as the filler will shrink a little during the vac form process, leaving marks of the frames on the finished part. Instead, I use the plug to create another plaster mould... ...and from this I can cast the final plug in polyester resin which I this time tinted red to easier check surface finish. Below is the final result, sanded and polished. Unfortunately it cracked a little when I released it from the mould - I was probably too eager to release it as it had only hardened over night. Next time I'll follow 24 hour rule of thumb when dealing with critical parts like this. I decided to go ahead with the plug anyway. With some luck the crack will not be visible in the vac formed part, and if it is visible it is still better to make a prototype clear part to see if any adjustments are needed before creating a new plug. Fortunately the "filller plug" survived the plaster casting (against the odds) so I can easily create a new plastic plug. So, first pull, using 1 mm acrylic sheet. From this mess you should be able to find a perfectly fitting hood somehow... About 20 minutes later of dremel saw and belt sander brutality I was able to fit something onto the body. Not great, not terrible. Theres a gap on the underside of both sides, but to be honest I have cut the cockpit opening a little too low. That is easily fixed as there is a frame that should fit in there anyway. And on this side I think both the cockpit opening is too low and I was a bit too harsh when trimming the hood. However, the crack on the plug turned out to leave a mark on the hood, and I had also trimmed the acrylic plug too much, leaving an impossible to fix gap on the port side. Hence, I will mould another plastic plug and do another vac forms (I need at least two good ones as the hood will be cut open in the end). This will cost the process another few days but there's plenty of other things to take care off while the plaster and plastic is drying

Next step is to determine a build order. The interior needs to be fitted and this speaks for keeping the fuselage open until that is done. However, this will prevent me from working with parallell tracks such as fin, stabilizers and surface details and in the end I need to merge the fuselage halves to be able to finalize the cockpit anyway. Hence, I decided to do a minimum of interior to be able to merge the fuselage halves, and then the rest of the cockpit can be finalized from above or from the still open nose section while also working on other parts of the model. One of the reasons I want to be able to alter between cockpit work and other types of work is that the cockpit is a small mess, where everything needs to be done as separate parts. Being fun for a while, this work could still benefit from having a rest from time to time… The photo below is from a museum example of a J22 and may have seen some stuff over the years, but the few photos I’ve seen from factory new planes look about the same, let alone for the colors being more homogenic. Before starting anything I cut out a rough cockpit opening using a Dremel saw. Careful measuring was done as it will mean a lot of work if this part is screwed up. I will add some frames to the cockpit sides and create a cockpit floor. Everything else can be fitted later. One disadvantage of the casting method is that you have little control over the thickness of the fuselage walls. This makes the creation of a floor tricky but also the cockpit sides. Below I have sanded the walls down to a good thickness and surface finish and have given them some initial primer. Next time I will probably cut open the fuselage and vac-form the sides instead. That would make this process much easier. A profile gauge was used to measure both sides and to create a fitting floor. The floor will be asymmetrical, but not to an extent that is notable in the end. To the floor I added some details in plastic card - the footrests and two sausage shaped bulges that were there to accommodate the retracted wheels. The floor was primed, making my pen markings bleed, but I had already drilled two small holes (one will later be used for the control column) to keep track of the centerline so no damage done. Various handles were lathe turned from brass. The four small ones in front were used to reload the cannons. The transparent ”heels” at the front were milled from acrylic and I think they were indicators for that the wheels were retracted and secured. [ I first experimented with olive drab (that’s how I interpreted the photos) but after all it turned out that it should be the ordinary interior green. I mixed mine myself from Tamiya XF-5 Green and XF-3 Yellow. Below is the result where I have also added some soldered brass to represent controls. All the ”knobs” should eventually be painted black, and I will probably try to make the plain green color more ”alive” at a later stage, perhaps when more details have been added. An enormous amount of dry fitting was made and still it was tremendously difficult to create fix points for the floor in the fuselage halves - another reason to use a different approach in the future. In the end I managed to brute force the fitting, though, and now the fuselage halves have been merged with epoxi glue together with the floor. Below you can see some of the result, with details added to cockpit walls as well as to the floor (there’s also some sanding dust I need to take care of). The cockpit opening has been refined with a belt sander and some patches have been done to the fuselage. I’ve carved out a hole on the forward right. That’s for an exhaust slot (or whatever) that I will need to fit later. The area aft of the bulkhead in the cockpit will later be covered. To make sure that everything is shaped correctly I created a forward bulkhead, so far to be used as a template for alignment. The part is a piece of acrylic that has been lathe turned to be thinner, and the shape has been done with a belt sander (the shape has been further refined since this photo). A piece of brass was press fitted into the part and will be where the propeller shaft eventually goes. When the cockpit is ready the nose will be sealed off with this part.

Thanks for the readings! I've actually been looking around for something like that but haven't been able to find anything. Moulding as a technique is mentioned in it but I actually got it from Paul Budzik's page. The red plane was repainted for an air show if I'm not mistaken. I will probably go for a plain green but I'm quite far from having to take decision right now. This will probably be a long project

After my P-47 was finished I started to look into what to do next. Model building had been on pause for 20 years or so and while I enjoyed the P-47 I would also say that I developed my model building skills and pushed my limits more than with any other model before. Having glued models together before I felt I wanted to stretch even further and decided to take on one of the ideas for scratch building that has evolved. One of these ideas is the Swedish J22. The J22 was a result of the situation that arose with the outbreak of WWII in 1939. The Swedish Air Force at the time was outdated, with a limited number of Gloster Gladiators as the only fighter capability, and due to the war it was very hard to find anything else to buy. A deal to purchase a number of Seversky P-35 was halted with the US export embargo, and Sweden had to start over with the efforts to modernise the Air Force. In the end it was decided to build an own fighter (interesting to mention, however, is that license building of Bf109 is said to have been very close). The J22 was a tiny plane with specifications and armaments that would have been no match to whatever contemporary plane it would have met in battle, but it was still quite modern and could be built in some numbers. 198 planes were built and were in service between 1943 and 1952, although it was probably soon overshadowed by Mustangs and even jets that were introduced the the Swedish Air Force just shortly after the war. The J22 has been represented in 1/72 by some vac forms and, since the mid 90’s, by an injection moulded kit from Marivox. There is also a 1/48 kit that has been out for a few years. I thought the small size would benefit from a 1/32 and that’s my opening for a scratch build. After having collected some photos, one dedicated book from the 1980s-something and a blueprint from Björn Karlström (who once made blueprints for most aircrafts from the history of the Swedish Air Force) I decided to start. Bear in mind that this project is highly experimental and don’t be surprised if it ends up belly-up (or down in a trash bin) all of a sudden. But hopefully it will work out and I thought anyhow that it I wanted to share the experiences, so here we go. Start is with the fuselage. My vac form capacity is rather limited so I needed alternative ways to create a hollow body. I fell for the method to create a plaster mould in which the fuselage is cast in resin, in my case polyester resin. Starting off with the master, by cutting and setting out the different frames on a profile. The frames are filled with model clay, then left to dry for a couple of days and thereafter sanded smooth. Plaster is poured over the masters that have been treated with some silicone oil as a release agent. They are again left to settle for a couple of days after which the masters are removed. One disadvantage of the process is the the clay masters do not survive, so make sure not to drop the plaster moulds once you have them… Polyester resin was then applied to the moulds. The resin I use was colorless straight from the bin but I realised that colored plastic would be much easier to work with. Hence, the resin was dyed with some special purpose green. Below are the fuselage halves straight from the moulds. At this point it’s hard to tell if this is a disaster or a success… But a cleanup and some dry fitting can do wonders. Well, this seems like at least workable to me. To be continued! [bild]

Thanks! The NMF is Alclad polished aluminium which was partially oversprayed with Alclad Aiframe aluminium, mostly because I run out of the polished one... The belly tank was painted, after all the lessons were learned, with Alclad Polished Aluminium over a light gray base coat (Humbrol 40). I believe that should have been the way to go for the airframe as well. The parts around the cockpit, including the hood, is Alclad polished aluminum over a black base coat (as it should be done by the book), but I think this combination ends up way too shiny to be convincing.

This P-47 is my first finalized build in about 23 years or so. I've tried a lot of new techniques on this one and mostly it went well, although the final finish left a little to whish for. Hasegawa's model itself is nice with the fitting and surface finish you can expect from more modern Hasegawas (modern and modern, I think this kit origins from 1988...). When it comes to details it left a little to the builder - I think this one should be considered an up-scaled 1/72 rather than a down-scaled 1/32 in this respect. I've improved some of the parts, especially around the landing gear area (the landing gear struts are for example new brass turnings with some details added from the kit part), but also the cockpit area and engine. Build thread: I took the kit out in the sun for some photos in natural light. Thanks for watching!

So, at last, this build is now finalized. Like I mentioned in the beginning of the thread I took on this project more than 20 years after my last one. This has been a fun build, but it feels like "unlucky incidents" have been overrepresented in this project compared to kits I built before. Despite quite a lot of experience from airbrushing this part of the process nearly killed of the project at a late stage, but I decided to finalize it anyway. The final paintjob finish is far from my target ambitions but now I won't redo the mistakes. Most of the other mistakes I've managed to compensate for, but I should have in mind that I really pushed it with this one and tried out a lot of new techniques and I have also gradually built up a small workshop along the way.. Hence a lot of lessons learned for the upcoming projects - there'll certainly be one! The model itself is nice with the fitting and surface finish you can expect from more modern Hasegawas (modern and modern, I think this kit origins from 1988...). Detail-wise I, to be honest, expected a little more and a lot of the details around the interior, engine and landing gears / wheel bays felt more like an up-scaled 1/72 than the down-scaled 1/32 I was hoping for. This leaves some room for the builder, though, and I would happily take on this kit again. Or, even better, the Hasegawa 1/32 while I'm at it... I took the kit out in the sun for some photos in natural light. Thanks for watching!

The belly tank (and wheels) mounted, in a quite revealing closeup... Wheel bay doors are next!

Now it's standing on its own feet so to say. Hopefully I got all the angles right. Decals are completed. In the end the yellow I chose for the paintwork turned out to be a little too red which is apparent when it was combined with the yellow decal on the engine cowl, but it's something I can live with. Traces of previous sins with the alclad base coat are imminent in this area, however. Just compare the finish of the landing gear struts, which is also alclad (aluminium, however) on top of a base coat, with the area around the oil cooler outlets. Looking at the underside the disastrous paintwork is even more apparent and it's no wonder I briefly considered throwing the whole project away. This is however the worst affected area together with the underside of the wings. The upper side of the model I managed to recover almost in full, and that is why the project survived. Lessons learned, though, and now I have the airbrush process under full control for the next project. The mountings for the belly tank, which I carefully had fitted and tried out so that the belly tank itself could just be easily mounted in the end, unfortunately fell victim of the paint recovery and it was not possible to reuse them. I had to find another solution and instead fitted four plastic rods where wholes were drilled in the middle. A smaller copper wire will later be fitted in the wholes and I think the results should give an impression of the real construction. The belly tank itself, by the way. Again alclad and this time done right, perhaps a little too shiny but I will let that pass. It has now been mounted but I couldn't take a picture before it had all dried and settled so that will come in my next post. And then a shot of the tail wheel installation, without the tailwheel... The small struts that are connected to the wheel bay was originally moulded on, creating a "wall" across the wheel bay. I carved them away with a scalpel and replaced them with 0.2 mm wire.

The landing gear struts, now full length and with an improved mounting solution versus the kit. The core is etched brass, with some added details from the kit and some copper wire, either glued or soldered on. Took a chance with Alclad aluminium in the end and this time it turned out well...

Just realized it was a while since I updated here. Things are coming together, finally (this project feels a bit delayed now). More details have been added to the landing gear. The work has included some soldering, with varying results but came out ok with a little patience. Some details have been moved from the kit parts to make life easier. Only one detail left, then the landing gears will soon be cleaned from any excess material and painted. In the meantime I've also started with the decals. As I have mentioned before the decals are quite hard to handle since they sits real hard on their carrier paper (they could be from the mid-90s something), but once in place they turn out quite fine with some microset and -sol. The decals were by the way thinner than I expected so the invasion stripes shine through a little on the insignia, but I will leave it as that for this time. Painting all the stripes rather than using the decal versions of them payed off, though.

In a previous post I removed the pattern from the tyres in order to get rid of the ugly joint in the middle of them. After a few spins in the lathe I ended up with this: Left to do was to create some kind of new pattern. The lathe was converted into a mill and the diagonal threads should be made by a thin rotary saw. The only saws I had at hand at the time was 0.8 mm thick. That was definitely too wide but I decided to give it a go anyway, letting the saw approach the wheel with an angle and so to say use the "corner" of the saw to make the pattern a bit thinner. The first result below... Not quite. New blades were ordered, with a more sensible thickness of 0.3 mm. The wheel was covered with polystyrene filler and again run in the lathe. The rig was set up again, as seen here, and a new attempt was made. Although some patience was required it was not an as time consuming process as I first anticipated. After an hour or so I had made both wheels. Both wheels were polished in the lathe again and it all ended with an at least OK result. In retrospect the distance between each diagonal cut could have been smaller. But as a proof of concept, to see if I could even do it this way, it was kind of a success. Also better than putting slicks on the plane... Next timeI do this I will try to fine tune the process.

I considered that the antenna on the back should better be mounted before the final part of the paint job. It proved to be a small challenge, since the antenna was missing any form of location pin and the area that was to be glued was microscopic. Realizing that the antenna would disappear at the slightest sneeze I went for a more rigid solution. With a steady hand a 0.35 mm hole was drilled in the antenna which in itself was no thicker than 0.7 mm at it's widest point. I drilled as deep as I dared to, which turned out to be around 1,5 mm. At that point I saw that the plastic started to give way on the outside. A 0.3 mm wire was inserted and could serve as a location pin, while at the same time making the antenna more sturdy. A corresponding hole was drilled in the fuselage. Of course I managed to locate the first one too much forward, despite efforts, and it had to be filled with CA later. The antenna was added and finally the last painting stage, the olive drab on the fin, stabilizer and fuselage back, could be finalized. Some small cleanups still to do but to my relief the three stripes on the fin turned out really well.

Current state after some more masking, let alone in a photo that was a quickie and with the wings still masked off. The black invasion stripes and the glareshield has been added, along with the colored stripes on the fin and the interior green over the canopy rail behind the cockpit. I had some problems with the red color on the fin (not the tone, but the actual paint - it seems to have rotten a little and was difficult to thin properly without disintegrating) which took a while to fix and it also seems to have bled through the masking tape into the yellow. That'll be an easy sanding fix, though. What is now left before the decals is the olive drab on the fin, stabilizer and the back of the fuselage. The kit instructions says these should be black but this has later been confirmed wrong. (Rumor says that also the starboard wing of the "Angie" was olive green, but after all the work I've had with the Alclad I'll pretend I didn't see that...) In the meantime I've also done some improvements to the landing gear doors. These have a "lip" around them which on the original is just a thin plate, but too thick on the model. I've tried to illustrate it with a blue marker in the picture below. I went for the solution to replace the outer surface of the doors with brass sheet, which was cut to shape using the kit doors as a template. I first thought that I should need to sand down the existing lips on the doors, but when comparing them to photos of the real thing I realized that their total thickness was probably correct. That actually made things easier since I just had to cut away the "lips" and simply add the new brass covers. This was repeated on the four main doors, but the smallest one I will leave as-is as they would require a complete scratch build which was not really worth the effort at this point. Let's see if I'll thin them down a little. So back to the airbrush again, together with the remaining parts of the landing gear. Things are starting to wrap up.