Brad,
Oh my!! Now that's impressive. I'll continue to think about it as I have until Sept/Oct till that GB starts.

Joel

Like Joel I'm looking forward to seeing some paint on your excellent build Brad.

tim

sort of a good news/bad news situation here. Bad news; I fell down a flight of stairs and sprained my entire right foot...no work for me until it heals. Good news; lots of time in the shop...I just wish it paid better. Anyway, I'm 99.9% done with the -102. I need to touch up a few areas where the decals shattered, or the paint rubbed off the tires, etc...maybe enhance the weathering a tiny bit....possibly topcoat the whole thing with semi-gloss. But aside from those minor items, it's done. During final assembly I noted a couple of things...

The main landing gear arrangement is poorly engineered. I see what they were trying to do with the door actuation arms, but there has to be a better way. the entire affair is exceedingly fragile, and I think the doors sit too low.

The resin cockpit was very nice, but the anti-glare panel that splits the windscreen is quite thin, and makes mounting the gunsight assembly problematic. Also very delicate.

I used MV lenses for the wingtip nav lights as well as the nose landing gear landing light. There are two light assemblies on the aft fuselage that, when unlit, are dark and difficult to duplicate. I haven't Painted them yet as I'm still trying to fight out a way to duplicate the darkened light 'look'.

Decals were a mash-up of a very old Microscale data sheet, kit decals, and Fundekels. The Microscale markings were still mostly usable, but brittle. The kit decals, printed by Cartograph, were downright amazing (but of the wrong bird), and the Fundekel set was generally very nice, but where multicolor or dense pigment was required, I found them to quite brittle and hard to work with.

Anyway, on to the photos...please feel free to critique away, that's how we get better.

Brad,
A most impressive build of what is essentially a rather old kit. Your panel line scribing is a highlight of the build for me.

Joel