Well, what can I say, I don't have enough started projects on my work-bench so I had to start another one

It's a Hasegawa model, scale 1/48 very nicely detailed, look like it will be fun to build it, but first let we see what we can find in the box ( I bought the model second-hand on some modeling event so some of the parts were already taken of the frame but they are all there ) :



Of course I have a lot of " fun stuff " for my A7. Eduard P.E. set :



The seat :



Aires electronics :



Aires wheel bays :

URL=http://s698.photobucket.com/user/modellius_senta/media/A7%20E/181220134461_zpse54b1f85.jpg.html][/URL]

Quickboost lights :



Micro Scale and Super Scale decal sheets as well ( most probably it will the A7 from U.S.S. Forestal but it's a long way 'till there )

Looking forward to following your build. Seems like you have a AM part for just about every part of the A7-E. Your cockpit should be spectacular with all those resin goodies.

Joel

Glad you follow the work, maybe the only missing AM is resin cockpit, but with the seat and p.e. set I think it will be ok....

First the seat. The belts are combined aires from the seat kit and from the eduard p.e. set and of course there is some scrath upgrade with a copper wire and sprue

Multi pics were too small for me to really view. Decided to try double clicking, and what a know, large size pics!

The Seat looks spectacular. The harness and belts have a ton of detail. The bits and pieces of sprue really adds to overall seat details. Copper pull ring looks like a real bear to paint. Nicely done.

Joel

90% finished seat

Seat is really looking good. Nice job in painting the ejection grab handle.
Joel

And the work continued..... Aires way to replace the kits part is not a good idea, I think it can't be done on that way and to look as it should, so I had to remove almost half of the kit and rebuild it from styrene and use the aires replacement parts as the starting point. Of course lots of details lost....



The intake is complicated as much as possible, it has two halves, longitudinally, lots of putty and sanding on a very inaccessible place, not to mention the bad connection of the intake with the fuselage. Here the only upgrade I made is the cutting of the hasegawas inake end and made a new one from styrene and some p.e leftover to simulate the first row of the blades of the engine, becouse of the size of the intake it will be visible

Modellius, I think that you must have every PE & resin AM parts set made for the 1/48 scale A7-E, not to mention several AM decal sheets. For sure your build will be a super detailed one.

Getting resin AM parts to fit has always been a challenge. I asked more then once why there were always issues, some requiring major cutting, filing, and sanding. The general consensus is that in the molding process, there is a lot of expansion and shrinkage, and this varies from one batch to the next. From the amount of work that you've done so far, I'd say that you solved all those issues.

Being 1/48 scale, I'm quite surprised that Hasegawa accepted such a poor fit for the intake. You certainly did a exceptional job of correcting those errors, as it looks 100% better now.

Joel

After endless hours of putty and sanding, and to be honest after a longer brake I continued the work on my A7.... With the fuselage nearly finished I started to work on landing gears. While the wheel wells are nearly perfect, no update, or to be precise, there is some but it's nearly not worth even to mention it, so I had to do some scratch. Here is the beginning.

Modellius,
Just job getting the AM landing gear installed. Wire brake lines are looking good.
Joel

And finally, the last detail to complete the seat arrived



more about it you can read here

http://www.letletlet-warplanes.com/forum/makete-aviona-aircraft-modeling/remove-before-flight/

The work continued, I put together the wing section with the fuselage, disaster, lots of putty and sanding will be needed......Again....



And just for the fun of it, I cut out all the moving surfaces on the wing section.....



To relax, I continued to work on the wheel bays, some more hydraulic tubes added, all the connection are soldered, first I made the proper shape and then installed it in the weel bays

The work continued. The landing gears are in they last phase.....



...so I started some other things to do. First the pylons, some leftovers from Jimmy photo etched parts, wire and some soldering again, and only one detail from the Eduard set....




....and the lights.Of course Quickboost lights for HB doesn't mach Hasegawa so I used the resin in color which is not needed for the model, some sanding and polishing in the next few days.....

After endless hours of putty and sanding, trying to get the airspeed brake to the correct shape and fitting to the fuselage I got enough and put the model to " cool down " a bit....Well it was a long period of time but ten days ago I started again, and again it didn't work properly, so I took of the already glued airspeed brake from the fuselage and I will made it in a slightly open position, about 3 - 5 degrees. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that it almost never happened to look like this, but I just don't have the nerves for this anymore.....