Part 3: Basic Assembly

After buttoning up the fuselage, the rest of the assembly moved pretty quickly because there isn't much to assemble until everything is painted. So, much sanding and cleaning of mold seams and minor assembly ensued. Since everything is crisply molded there wasn't much to clean up. However, all was not wine and roses - there were some areas that called for careful attention. After cleaning up all of the wings and tail pieces, I took care to attach all of the control horns and the small photo etched grommets (PE17). I also did whatever pre-drilling that I needed to accomplish prior to painting. I used a sewing gauge to duplicate distance between holes and leading edges - thanks to John Kelley for the tip. The gauge holds the distance setting so I could do multiple parts easily. A good reference is critical here as the rigging diagram in the instructions is a bit vague. I found some great photos here:   http://www.lothars-photodump.de/walkaround.htm .

I then tackled the daunting task of step 5 - attaching the small struts that affix the lower wing to the fuselage. I decided to go ahead and set these struts so I could a) have a 'stand' to keep the bottom surface off of the ground as I painted and b) I figured that if I could get these parts aligned properly and set carefully than it would help the rest of the wing alignment proceed easily. Please note that the entire following embarrassing episode was entirely my fault and absolutely no reflection on the fine manufacturers of this kit: I sweated these little parts for an entire evening by trimming, dropping them on the beige carpet, sanding, dropping one again causing a 20 minute search, gluing them facing the wrong way, ungluing, drat! - wrong hole, ungluing, sanding again, resetting them correctly and finally holding my breath as I gently dry fitted them to the lower wing. Ah, they looked perfect right up until the moment that a strut came loose causing a chain reaction which resulted in a mass of struts, wings, glue and many, many bad words. I repeated all of the steps (including the "lose the parts" step) and again held my breath as I wedded wing to fuselage … alignment is good … just a dab of zip kicker and victory! A short victory dance followed to the embarrassment of my 9 year old who was walking by at the time. Again, please note that the preceding episode was caused by my fumbling fingers.

Not wanting to rest on my laurels, I then assembled the landing gear. Prior to passing the gear through the lower wing you will need to enlarge the hole in the wing as indicated in the instructions. Once that was done I carefully dry fitted the wing, fuselage and landing gear which all fit well and the entire assembly was much more robust than I anticipated. I entirely skipped step 9, which calls for the installation of the under-wing bomb racks. I decided to leave them off of the completed model so I just filled the holes and moved on.

The last pre-assembly item was a major pain - the rear gun cradle. The actual gun assembly proceeded as instructed with the exception of using paper for the leather strap instead of the photo etched part. Once I had the paper in place, I soaked it in hot stuff which hardened it in place. The problem is that the distinctive supports for gun elevation (PE6) were very delicate and fiddly. It took me an entire evening of modeling to assemble these parts and I was not entirely satisfied with my efforts. If I had to do it again I would have glued the plastic parts solidly first, then tackled the addition of the photo etch. It would have been nice to have a plastic option to use here - it would have been a more solid, albeit less detailed, attachment point.

Next come a white primer coat and Kabuki theatre ……

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