Hello everyone! Thank you all for the kind words! I’m trying my best on this one.
MP – I don’t know if I’m really sold on the UMM prop tool. It had originally set the prop blades at a very strange/extreme pitch angle that I ended up relaxing a little bit before gluing the prop blades in place. But they are all even, which I probably would never have got on my own. Maybe I’m not using it right. Don’t know… :hmmm
I have a small update here today. I was out of town all week so didn’t get much bench time until today. All the remaining pieces have been added to the fuselage. The gun sight was painted flat black and then the glass elements were added, using future to secure them. Then it was attached to the instrument panel and the windshield was added. The photoetch grab handles were attached inside of the windshield before I attached it to the fuselage. Also the rear of the canopy was attached and the cockpit masked off. I also used a Master turned brass pitot tube. A must for me as I always break off the plastic ones!
We are now ready for some paint! I first painted all the clear parts with Tamiya XF63 and once that had dried I primed the airframe with Alclad gray primer. After about an hour I started looking for any problems with seems or blemishes. Sure enough I found a few and cleaned them all up.
After priming I sprayed the underside of the horizontal tail in Tamiya gloss black, figuring it would be easier to mask those off then try to mask all around them to spray the black. Next step was the RLM 75. I planned to use the Xtracolor RLM 74/75 for this build, but unfortunately my RLM 74 had turned into tar, in color and consistency! It was pretty unusable so I used my White Ensign Colorcoats RLM 75 instead. I sprayed the entire upper surface and a good bit under the tail.
Next step will be the RLM 74. I’ll probably do this in stages, the camo on the wings first, then the mottling on the fuselage. But I’m going to let this sit as is for a day or so to let the paint cure, as the wing pattern is the hard edged geometric shapes, don’t want to ruin my nice smooth finish with the masking!
Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, thanks for looking, and as always comments are always welcome!
See you in a few days!
Mike