Construction begins typically with the cockpit section. The kit cockpit is very nicely detailed, the seats are ok and the cockpit panels are very nicely detailed, complete with radar screens and the artificial horizon display, which I painted in. The painting of gear sections, radar and the cockpit took me about a week! I shaded the instrument panel to show a little shadow here and there, and also did the same in the gear bays. However I
fear I may loose some of this detail when the model is complete, although you can leave a crew hatch open on the top side of the plane to see inside.

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I painted the inside of my burner cans with a matt white finish first, and over this is used brown and black watercolour paints to give the used feel to them, which I'm quite pleased with.

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The nose radar was hard to find pictures of, so I used photos that people on the discussion board managed to find and the kit instructions to give a 2-tone grey finish with gold and black parts. The cockpit was also hard to find reference photos for, so I used what I could find and made the rest up, not that it's a particularly great error as you can't see most of it. 

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The forward fuselage requires a 70gram noseweight, so I just stuck one packet of blu-tack in the nose, and wedged it in place with some bits of the spru I trimmed to size and glued in, so even if the blu loses its tack, it ain't going nowhere!

The landing gear is very nicely detailed, I painted all the components white while they were on the spru, then assembled them before I gave them the usual watercolour wash, so that I could visualise how the gear struts worked, and then weather them according to the walk-around pictures from this site. I had difficulty removing paint from all areas, which was going to be quite an obvious obstacle, so I just held the assembled parts under the tap for a few seconds; looks good to me! 

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The bomb bays were nicely detailed, as were the main gear wells. I weathered all of the components for these parts while on the sprue, and I was so pleased with the results that I left one bomb bay empty, to show my weathering, the other two occupied by a fuel tank and a rack of missiles. 

I read somewhere that the wings in this kit usually come warped because of their size, I had no such problems. There is a nasty gap under the wing at the joint for the flaps, but nothing some filler can't sort out. After assembling these parts, I glued down the top and bottom halves of the centre fuselage, and this is where the kit turned nasty. It took 2 of us to hold the pieces while they were being taped up, and the area around the engines took a lot of effort to fit any thing like nicely. When the glue was dry the next day and the tape was removed, on one side of the plane I had a perfect join, the other there was about a 2mm overhang. Some sanding was required to say the least!

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The engines are the worst area for fit I found. The top and bottom halves don't fit too great, neither do the inside parts of the intake, and the front section is pretty poor, there was a fair amount of filler and sanding used on these areas.

Joining the 3 segments (nose, main and tail) of the fuselage together was pretty straight forward, a little sanding and filler was used on the forward section. Then attaching the main gear, pretty simple again, although I had trouble finding the fit, then I stumbled across some holes where you plug the gear into! D'oh!

Then it was basically done, final touches here and there, then time to do some serious painting - 2 coats of Humbrol 125 Satin, then a layer of gloss, and then some decals. Then I had enough varnish for a single coat of Matt varnish - it's still in need of a second, but college is in the way at the moment. I will send in some more detail shots, and ones with the second coat of varnish when it is done.

Thanks to Will Snuggs for lending me his digital camera for the pics - it's too big to get in the shop!

Hope you enjoy seeing my model as much as I enjoyed making it.

Daniel

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