More Epoxysculpt and flat white primer wars. I reduced the diameter of the cowling inlets after comparing them to my Ju-388, the 1/72 Hasegawa and Italeri
Ju 188's and some 1/72 FW 190's and concluded that they just looked wrong, more like a Jumo powered airplane that a BMW 801. That meant that the
kit cooling fans were too large in diameter as well. I had made a mold and had already cast more because I had broken one, so that was for naught.
They are so fragile that trying to make the props turn was a non starter. I borrowed a fan from a Hasegawa 190 for a master and made a mold from that,
and cast some more fans. I used strips of .040 styrene curled in to circles to reduce the diameter of the cowls and sanded them to contour.
After attaching the wings I could see that something was awry, the nacelles on one side had upthrust. That confused and somewhat perturbed me, and
upon further examination I could see that the wings are not the same at the root from one side to the other, so that the incidence if the left wing was
too great even though I had matched the leading edges and trailing edges when I attached them to the fuselage and sighted from the rear to check
incidence. I measured the thickness of the roots and found that the forward half of the left wing is thicker than the right. Since the wing incidence is
not easy to see, I decided to saw off the cowls from the nacelles and reposition them. While I was at it I also sawed off the #4 and reset it. Practice makes
if not perfect at least acceptable to me at this point.
I had put the canopy on earlier, but of course during all that sawing I knocked it loose so I got to do that again.
Next I put the aft fuselage and vertical fins on. The fins have no positive location, so I made a jig to set the inward angle off the vertical that they have
and stuck them on with superglue. As soon as I had them on and the jig removed I could see that the fins were off alignment, they were both turned in too much
. Speed brakes. So, I broke them off, sanded the ends of the stabilizer to allow the fins to set straight, and after cleaning up the fins I glued them back on
and filled the joints to fair them with Aves Epoxysculpt. The fitting took a few tack, break and retack attempts because with clamps and jig in the way I
couldn't see from enough angles to get the fins right. They are perfect now. If you think they are not then you are wrong, Chukw!
After several fill and and sand sessions including filling the gear wells will Aves and contouring them, I then reattached the canopy which
I had knocked loose again. I'm getting pretty good at putting it back on now. The wing roots were not too bad to fix, but they certainly did not match the wings.
I'm pretty sure that any resin kit with thick castings is just going to be like that because of different relative shrinkage. In trade, there are no fuselage seams to mess with.
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