The Revell of
Germany wing does not thrill me either, but it is closer to the original than
the Italeri wing. You can see the main problem with the Revell wing by
looking at the photo of the underside where I have added yellow lines to show
where the outline of the forward gear bay SHOULD be! The way its molded
makes the outer main gear doors look anemic when open. I chose to use the
Italeri gear doors on the struts as they are closer to the originals and I
decided to just live with the gear bays as they were. You probably
wouldn't have noticed anyway if I hadn't told you! :)
Other mods I made to
the Revell wing were to remove the fairings forward of the ailerons on the top
and bottom of the wings, use the Italeri wing insert pieces for the 20 mm cannon
fairings, add an additional shell ejection chute outboard of the kit moulded
ones, file out and box in openings to accept two M.V. lenses for the landing
lights (these were then covered with crystal clear Scotch tape), fill the
original landing light and to fill and rescribe the correct gun-door
configuration for this variant of the Stang.
The Italeri 20 mm cannon fairings
were modified by replacing the barrels with new ones made from straight pins.
This made them stronger as the original plastic ones broke several times during
construction. I replicated the recoil springs by coiling fine brass wire
around another pin, cutting off the excess and then gluing them where the barrel
protrudes from the fairing.
Attaching the Revell wing to the
Italeri fuselage is tricky but won't seem so hard once its done. I
ended up using the Italeri wing as a template to make the Revell wing attach almost
like the original Italeri piece. More work is needed at the front where
the wing root fairings molded to the fuselage stick farther forward... these had
to be carefully ground down with a Dremel tool and then filled with CA glue for
more strength as the plastic will be thin here after the grinding. There
will be minor gaps between the flaps and the fuselage that need to be filled
with thin plastic and putty. The tops of the wings will require a lot of
putty toward the back half of the wing-root as the Revell wing does not conform
well to what Italeri molded on the fuselage.