Tbolt

As Tomas says we are talking about the secondary cowl panel, it's clear if you look at his photos.

I agree, the slide moulded section is easy enough to clean up. Some people are saying it's going to be a lot of work because they are going to loose detail, but it's a quick easy clean up, unless some are a lot worse, but mine's not bad at all.

Nothing really wrong with the lower section other than the rivets fading out towards the centerline, which is to be expected when a slide mould isn't used.

Not sure, I'll have to check. The upper nose section has a raised line which I'm guessing is from the slide mould, right along a panel line. Hopefully it will just trim off with a knife and then be easy to achieve, though the plastic seems quite soft so it needs to be done carefully.

The 100ml matte varnish bottle says 3rd Gen on it, as do the satin and gloss, but the ultra matt doesn't and it also says new formula. So is the ultra matte an older formula and is it as good as the matte? I also noticed all the 60ml varnish bottles don't say 3rd Gen so are they any different to the 100ml bottles? They also quote the use of a different thinner to what the 3rd Gen matte does. I bought the 100ml matte bottle and like the varnish so I want to add the ultra matte and satin but just want the same quality and the ability to mix them together.

Yes MiniArt up and moved to Poland a little while back after the war started. Parts like the seat have to be in three parts because of the extra detail MiniArt have added.

Yes that's all it is. I suspect it was always installed, though I have no period photos to prove that. I suspect MiniArt have seen a museum example without it fitted so that's why it's in the kit. Just like why we've got P-47N wheels in the kit, because three warbirds have them fitted.

While the actually door might not have been perfectly flush, you have to be carefully doing this on a model, as there are many parts that are not perfectly flush, but if you only replicate one of them it rather stands out, especially in 1/72nd scale. The wing skin should be lapped and not flush so we have a wing which is smoother than it should be, it just looks a bit strange with the doors sticking out, so I will also be sanding them down.

Its hard to tell too much from the RAF Museums Battle as the doors are a bit all over the place, but it looks to me like they should be flush. In these photos is does appear though that they don't necessarily close perfectly. But it also seems that the doors were in three parts, not two as in the kit. So after sanding them down scribe them correctly. The fabric effect on the ailerons looks way over done as well.

When I do prime a model I usually use a Mr Color satin, such as C13 Neutral Gray, or a gloss if doing a NMF, but Mr Surfacer 1200 or Mr Primer Surface 1000 would be a good choice. With aqueous acrylic varnishes, I've found with gloss, the more you thin them, the more you lose the gloss finish, so I only use gloss that can be sprayed straight from the bottle, such as Aqua Gloss or AK's Gauzy Agent Shine Enhancer. I'm looking for a new satin and matt aqueous varnish, as I've been using the Vallejo ones but I don't like the way the surface stays slightly tacky for a long time after application, causing the finish to pick up many small bits of dust.

Here's my pictures from Saturday. As always the previous years are in my signature.

Yes but here we don't have movable elevators, we have one set fixed in the faired position and one in the deflected position. I dont think I've ever seen that before either, but it does simply construction, though whether it's worth doing over positionable ones, I don't know.

I got hold of a replacement clear sprue and the windscreen is no different unfortunately, 3 cold shuts all in the same place. At least the main canopy doesn't have the black dot in. Maybe the injection pressure they use is too low to get a clear part moulded well.

This area is treated as an external surface, so painted OD on aircraft that were finished in OD and was left unpainted starting with 42-25274. These factory photos shows the turtle deck painted OD. Some people think that it wasn't OD just because of how the colour appears in some photos. Weathering plays a big part in why it often looks lighter, but often they waxed the exterior of the aircraft giving it a darker and shinier appearance. The canopy also can affect the look, notice here how the turtledeck is lighter but the fuselage area behind it looks a little lighter than the rest of the fuselage. Some aircraft appear to show the turtledeck considerably lighter than the rest of the fuselage such as on this aircraft. But note this is a war weary airframe, so has been around a while and a lot of the paint on the fuselage isn't original. Some aircraft get repaired and this area might not get repainting OD. Some people have surmised this is what could have happened with "Little Chief". Personally I don't thing that is the case with that airframe as it's not as light as others Ive seen. Here's a few more examples of photos which clearly show the OD. This area looking lighter can easily be achieved on a model. Here's one of my P-47's after painting and you can see the turtledeck is painted with the same OD as the rest of the model. Here it is after weathering and varnish coats, the turtledeck now appears a lot lighter than the rest of the aircraft.

They could do, but if they had planned that it would have made sense to have some other parts on separate runners rather than on the main ones, such as the rear armour, the seat and windscreen insert as those are not required for a Razorback. It doesn't mean they won't do a Razorback though, just that's it's not well planned if they are basing on what we see here.

I think those are just for the D-30 boxing. It looks like they are going to do a separate fuselage with the dorsal fillet moulded in.

Sorry, it's all moving too fast for us old guys 😂

Here's a build video.

I just use a cheap baby bottle warmer I bought from Amazon.

I'm not sure they have named them wrong as it clearly says on the bottle to use Setter, apply the decal then apply Softer. But if Setteris strong then just use it for both I guess.

I thought the same, but I don't think they were taken at the same time as he's got different epaulettes on his shoulders. I think we should be discussing this in the appropriate section though as we are clogging up this thread.

I don't know why many photos show the flaps down but interestingly in the training video the shut down checks include selecting the flaps to down after stopping the engine, though this doesn't appear in the manuals or on the checklists that go in the aircraft. The manuals do state to not taxi with the flaps down.

Good question. In these photos of RAF Thunderbolt Mk.II's, the first seems to show the original US harness and the second one seems to show maybe the Sutton type used in the Typhoon. Maybe these photos were taken when they switched over?

You can build any D-25 to D-28 without a dorsal fillet if you have the prop, so just don't do any of the D-30's on that sheet.

Like Tomas says the majority of photos show them up, but there's plenty of photos that show them down so go with whatever you want.