Part 4: The Build, Continued

After the fuselage was closed - with absolutely no issues and a nice tight fit with all the parts, I built the moveable tail control surfaces and mounted them to the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. Tamiya uses rather heavy metal attachment hinges which fit securely into the slots provided and support the rudder and elevators nicely. No flop. No wiggle and they are pretty strong. Next up was the lower half of the wing with various cooling bits, the cannon and ammo drums and the workable landing gear legs and doors. Most of this is pretty straightforward and the instructions are clear. Building the landing gear doors with the slippery little chrome wires trapped between the pieces was an trip down frustration alley for me. I ended up with gray-tac - same as blue-tack, but gray - as a 'jig' to hold the bottom of the assembly still while I tried to keep the little wire in it's slots while maneuvering the upper assembly onto thee lower, getting the ends of the little wire thingy in it's slots. I did this a number of times before I got it all lined up. Then I held it with both hands and used the third hand to glue it all together. Then I had to do this again for the other part.

This has been the most frustrating experience I've had so far with this build. Given the complexity of the kit, that's not bad. I think, however, doing this again I would opt to just glue the damn doors on. The landing gear mechanisms went together with absolutely no problems although from the looks of the instructions I could picture me sproinging springs around the room, but no problems and they work as advertised.

Now, I have the lower wing ready to attach to the fuselage. Test fittings show that minimal glue is necessary and, once again, the filler goes unused. Wing attachment in the next installment.

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