I've been busy elsewhere of late but some progress has been made.
A chap on the Airfix group passed on a tip about the front landing gear doors. Airfix have modelled them all to be open but in real life the rear doors are closed when the gear is locked down (similar to what I had with the Dragonfly).
There were enough pics to support his claim so I went with it. I took the closed door part and cut off the sections that remain open:
With the front gear assembled I checked it would still fit:
It's nice & sturdy with very positive mounting points. It'll need to be with all of that nose weight!
I'm posing this with the flaps down and Airfix have included these handy tabs on the hinges. Somewhere to hold them whilst painting, and marked with their port & starboard positions so you don't mix the eight very similar parts up. The tabs are removed before fixing the flap assembly to the wing:
There are also similar identification marks on the vertical winglets that fit on the horizontal stabilisers. Might come in handy since the top ones are painted a different colour to the upper surface, so could be added afterwards.
Also note how the upper & lower winglets key into each other, which should help alignment:
A chap on the Airfix group passed on a tip about the front landing gear doors. Airfix have modelled them all to be open but in real life the rear doors are closed when the gear is locked down (similar to what I had with the Dragonfly).
There were enough pics to support his claim so I went with it. I took the closed door part and cut off the sections that remain open:
With the front gear assembled I checked it would still fit:
It's nice & sturdy with very positive mounting points. It'll need to be with all of that nose weight!
I'm posing this with the flaps down and Airfix have included these handy tabs on the hinges. Somewhere to hold them whilst painting, and marked with their port & starboard positions so you don't mix the eight very similar parts up. The tabs are removed before fixing the flap assembly to the wing:
There are also similar identification marks on the vertical winglets that fit on the horizontal stabilisers. Might come in handy since the top ones are painted a different colour to the upper surface, so could be added afterwards.
Also note how the upper & lower winglets key into each other, which should help alignment:
I speak from experience … I don’t smell Tamiya paint at all, and haven’t for 25 or more years, unless I put the bottle right under my nose and breathe in. Almost the same with Mr. Aqueous, which I’ve only really started using over the last couple of years, though they do smell a bit different from Tamiya. But the times I’ve opened a bottle of Tamiya paint in the presence of someone who isn’t a modeller, have almost invariably been met with comments of how much the paint smells …
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