OK, another photo finish. This kit did bring home a couple of things to me, one, why 1/72 is not my favorite scale and two, why I don't build WWI aircraft :gogo
I need to back track a little before posting the final walk around. I found that some of the PE parts supplied where just way too big for the scale, case in point the actuator horns for the ailerons. Way over sized and if that wasn't enough they located the slots for them in the wrong place, they should have been where the red arrows are in the photo below. I considered making my own but ran out of time.
Also over sized were the dipoles for the antennas, I ended up using the kit supplied ones for the transmitting antennas but replaced all the ones for the receiving antennas (all 24 or them) with fine wire. I used the PE parts for length then found that they were also too long and had to go back and trim them all. :facepalm The last part i found unusable was the brackets that support the exhaust dampers, way too big and really didn't fit the way they showed in the instructions.
Next is a photo of the bottom, the only one. Once I started putting parts on top there was no way I was going to attempt to turn it over again. By the time I had all the fiddly bits on top I was running out of ways to handle it safely.
Here are some walk around photos...
Rigging the floats nearly landed the build in the dust bin. I spent the better part of four hours doing it and was still not all that happy with them. Probably would have went better with some of that stretchy stuff but I had none.
The brass gun barrels don't show up all that well in the photos but they really make a big difference in the over all look of the model.
Over all I liked the kit a lot, I wish I had installed the connector pipes from the cylinders to the exhaust collector rings on the engines, it would have made them look better to my eye. This is a big plane and as such I probably could have spent another week doing weathering. It's a big canvas. Photos show a lot of paint chipping on the hulls, almost as bad as some of the Japanese aircraft. Since the panel lines are a bit large I felt a wash to highlight them was unnecessary so I didn't do it. I'm pleased with the overall look in spite of some warts.
Thanks for looking in and following along.