jeaton01
Well-known member
I had so much fun seeing my Planet XP-40Q get to the finish that it just seemed right to go straight on to the next in line P-40 variant. It's been pretty smooth sailing as I am just doing an out of the box build but with Eduard seat belts and this is such a nice kit. I've read that the aft cockpit insert can be a mis-fit, so I worked on that by removing some material from the mating surfaces of the fuselage in that area. I also assembled the tail sections to the forward fuselage parts so I could get a good fit there and that also allowed application of glue from the inside. With the sides and top aligned there is a slight misalignment of some panel lines on the right fuselage half to clean up later, but they may be under the insignia decal.
I went through the instructions to find any other inserted parts but all I found were the lower gun panels, which fit very well and were glued from the inside. The instrument panel has a lot of relief, like the real thing with panels at different levels and some instruments recessed and other sticking out of the panel. I used the alternate decals without the black surrounding areas and had pretty good luck, probably because I used Mr. Mark Softer. Not much was happening with Microsol. Good enough for my 71 year old eyes. I wish I had leveled some of the switches on the mid level switch panel, I didn't realize that Hasegawa had molded the switches on them.
I went through the instructions to find any other inserted parts but all I found were the lower gun panels, which fit very well and were glued from the inside. The instrument panel has a lot of relief, like the real thing with panels at different levels and some instruments recessed and other sticking out of the panel. I used the alternate decals without the black surrounding areas and had pretty good luck, probably because I used Mr. Mark Softer. Not much was happening with Microsol. Good enough for my 71 year old eyes. I wish I had leveled some of the switches on the mid level switch panel, I didn't realize that Hasegawa had molded the switches on them.