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French Rescue Goose

Painting the interior

After all this time consuming work, I was happy to begin painting. I decided to go for the typical "Chamois" interior color of French planes as it would give a nice contrast to the Dark Blue exterior. I first sprayed Tamiya's Dark Yellow acrylic paint (XF60) on all the interior parts (picture 8). Then I drybrushed them with Humbrol enamels (a mix of white, flesh and khaki). Tamiya acrylics are almost "undrybrushable" (I found a new word!) and Humbrol paints are better for that. Then I added a wash of tinted Future (Klir in France) and painted the details. The result, as you can see on pictures 9 and 10 is quite amazing! Not that I'm an interior specialist, but with only an average paint job, the resin parts just look fantastic! I made a last picture of the interior before closing the fuselage... at least I have a photo as testimonial for all the work (picture 11).

Closing the Box

Now comes the most difficult part of the kit: getting the fuselage halves together! With that much resin parts inside, you can imagine there's not much room for adjustments. I often used the words "test-fitting" in the review and I think it's the key to any succesfull short run kit build! Signifer's Goose falls in that category and you'll have to test fit everything to avoid nasty surprises!

I used the following sequence (picture 12):

1 - First I glued the windscreen (after masking it) to one of the fuselage sides. 2 - Then I added the inside sub-assemblies. The windscreen is quite thick so you will have to adjust the top console of the cockpit as there is not enough space left. 3 - The fuselage halves are glued together and the resulting gaps (1 mm) are closed with spare plastic. 4 - The windscreen is adjusted and everything is held in place with strong clamps.

On the last picture you can see the result. I think it is acceptable. The wings were then glued in place and I found no real problem here... at least no problem that couldn't be resolved with a little bit of filler.

The resin elevators lost their hinges during the "cleaning" process so I made new ones before getting them in place (picture 13). Picture 14 shows the Goose almost ready for painting. You can see the areas were putty was used. But at least it looks like an airplane and not like a bus anymore.