Thanks guys! I'll try to get the bit on the IP written up and put in the tips section James.
Had a bit of a delay, as I was out of town visiting the beach with the family. Busy getting caught up with work, but wanted to take a quick break and update this thread
As mentioned, I plan to build this one all sealed up, so with that in mind, I am only assembling the minimum necessary to do so. While the kit provides a very nicely detailed fuselage interior, with fuel tanks, engine, ammo trays, etc., I am leaving most of that out. I think this is the minimum I need for the rocket motor and more importantly, the fuselage support:
I'm not going to bother painting it as only the end of the rocket motor will be seen, and there is a "cap" part that is the visible part anyway.
In reading other builds, it seem getting the wings attached properly without the fairing sticking out too far, and the front/rear fuselage join are the biggest challenges with this build. In order to minimize fit issues, I've spent a lot of modeling time thinking about the best way to go about assembling this kit. The instructions would have you go about it in the usual way, assembling the forward fuselage, and then the rear, attaching the wings, etc.
After this process, I've decided to try adding the wings to each forward fuselage half, then adding the rear fuselage half, and then finally joining the two fuselage halves together. We'll see how that turns out
One builder comment that stuck out was the idea that the wings were a bit too "fat" to fit properly. So before joining the wings, I paid careful attention to them to see if that was the case. I noticed that the inner "support" on the top and bottom wing parts near the wing root seemed to have a "rough" surface, as it seem there are some sort of ejector marks on it:
Looking at the two wing halves dry fit, there is indeed a gap there:
So, before joining, I sanded the support down a bit and I think this improved the fit of the wingroot fairing to the fuselage.
Another interesting thing is the MK108 30mm canons. The instructions have you assemble them and would have you attach one to each wingroot as shown here:
However, the keen-eyed amongst you will note that the tubes on each barrel have an angle to them. It would seem clear that the angle is designed to match the curve of the wing leading edge, but if you assemble/install them as instructed, they would be the opposite. Since I had already put the attachment supports on mine I simply installed them in the opposite sides. I would recommend to future builders to install the opposite supports on each canon so that they are oriented properly. Note that this does not apply to the 20mm canons, as those barrels stick out of the wing.
That's all for now, thanks for looking! Comments/questions/critique always welcomed!
Doug