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Obviously I was never going to build the (fairly simple) kit 'out of the box' and got to work modifying it. As a minimum I always make transparent canopies, a basic cockpit and recessed landing gear wells. On this build I will also use my improved spinner 'sandwich' technique and attempt a working wing fold.
The tail section was first. I backed the printed layer with an inner layer to strengthen and serve as a glue tab, and scored the panel lines. I also tried out a new idea for tailplane spars, having two sides of my favourite material, mount board, that slot together and keep the stabilisers aligned and firmly in place. A similar technique was used for the rudder.
The navigator's position has an entensive 'greenhouse' with a sliding hatch in the centre. Again, the piece was backed with an inner layer. It's important to glue this with the part shaped, so I had to glue in stages, adding the centre and then cutting out all 27 windows before gluing the sides. The hatch part was seperated, and edges were attached so that it could be re-attached as a recessed section. The glazing is thin and very flexible acetate which conforms nicely to curved surfaces and is a good scale thickness (you will have seen this on the Hellcat, MiG and London). Double-sided tape was used over as many surfaces as practical to hold the clear canopy in place.
After this, the nose, which was largely out of the box apart from reinforcing the front circle and gluing a toothpick section to recieve the spinner.
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