Time for an update. Good old Maly fit problems have been giving me fits. When cutting out the skin segment forward of the cockpit section, I suspected that something wasn't quite right about the contour of the aft end of the segment. Well, I was right. The top of the segment has about a sixteenth inch gap between skin parts 3 and 4; the bottom has about a one-thirtysecond inch gap where the skin wraps around the bottom of the former. I filled in the top gap with a scrap of cardstock; the bottom gap I'm letting be, since it will be covered over by the wing assembly. Part of the problem might be in the forward end of the cockpit section skin...I think there would be a better fit with the former if the cockpit skin section had about a thirtysecond of an inch added to both sides of the skin section that wraps around the top of the former. That would pull the top of the cockpit skin forward by about half the width of the gap. Some Photoshop work would still be needed on skin part 3, but not quite as much correction would be needed.
I really started having some fits when I tried putting skin segment number 2 in place....the aft end of that skin segment is about a sixteenth inch too short. I finally managed to fit it on the former by trimming off the joining strip, and cutting out the gun trough portion of skin segment 2. This, of course, leads to some mismatch between panel lines on the two skin segments, as illustrated in the second photo below. Using the skin segment as is turns the roman nose profile of this ship into a slightly semitic profile. Correcting this part in Photoshop is going to be tricky, as the forward end of the skin segment seems to be properly sized (it fits perfectly on its former). In order to make the size correction, and not screw up the match on panel lines at the bottom of the fuselage, the additional size needs to be introduced by adding a skinny pie-wedge shaped new segment into the skin piece 2 on both sides of the part, between the first and second panel lines....which will probably introduce a fit problem at the bottom of the fuselage that presently does not exist.
I decided to just use bond paper for the gun troughs. I curled a strip of bond around a bamboo skewer, and used the skewer as a support for the strip when inserting into the gun trough cutout. After trimming, it looks pretty good. A little touchup with some black paint, and the end result is presentable.
The white strips at the fuselage segment joins are not gaps....they are the uncolored areas caused by the poor color registration in the printing process. I have been haunting the local craft stores trying to find just the right shade of olive green to do those touchups with. The good news is I now have every shade of green that Ceramcoat makes.
The bad news is that none of them are an exact match.
