Special Hobby 1/72 D558-I

[jeaton01]

Here we go, the instrument panel is a plastic/film/pe sandwich, ready to install, with a few other internal bits started. The control pedestal with a pe bowtie for the yoke is also stuck together. I like to put the horizontal stabilizers on before joining the fuselage sides, it's easier for me to get them on straight that way.

 

[moon puppy]

 

[jknaus]

Looking good.
James

 

[Gator]

Neat!

 

[jeaton01]

Cruising along here. I shoved and hauled and believe or not all those interior pieces fit inside. It called for 6 grams of weight under the cockpit and I stuffed as much liquid gravity in there as I could and I think it will not be a tail sitter. Had to squeeze pretty hard on the fuselage to get that part together. The next speed bump came when I started fitting the wing. SH tells you to glue a wheel well center section on to the lower wing, and then fit that to the fuselage. Perhaps they even intended that the upper wings should be added to the lower before putting it all up to the fuselage. Right away things did not look good for the lower wing fitting up high enough to fair to the fuselage, so I ripped the resin insert off the wing and tried fitting just that to the fuselage. I had to do some grinding on the inside edges of the fuselage, and also deepen the notches where the insert fit into the fuselage. All was well in the end, but the upper wings just barely cover the deeper notches in the fuselage. Fit is pretty good everywhere now. Since I took these photos I taped off the seems and put some Mr Surfacer to work on them.

 

[RichB]

Adapt, improvise and overcome.

Cheers,
RichB

 

[moon puppy]

Hammer it in there John! Such short wing span, what on earth held it in the air?

 

[Heavens Eagle]

Coming along John! Glad you are up to the challenge.

 

[Gator]

Good work John!

 

[jeaton01]

This one is a wrap, sorry I haven't been doing more reports but Eatonville has been pretty busy lately, including on the bench where several other models are in progress.

All the main gear doors are photoetch on this one, and they are rather weird on the real thing, with one door covering most of the gear well and standing way out from the gear strut. Very delicate! I used Gunze Red Madder for the color, it looked good to me and I had it in the drawer. The decals were thin and liked to break, I had to find alternates for the insignia on the fuselage as the kit decals were hopeless. A good coat of Future covered all sins. It really wasn't a very large airplane as you can see in the last photo with a Mustang and D-7.

 

[helios]

Nice finish.

 

[moon puppy]

I like the idea of PE gear doors. Great job John!

 

[jeaton01]

Thanks, Chris and Bob!

 

[Rhino]

A fine job on a difficult build, as usual! I expected nothing less.

 

[jeaton01]

Thanks, Chris. As a limited run it wasn't too bad, way better than AModel kits I've built.

 

[sharkman]

Looks great John!

 

[jeaton01]

Thanks, Warren.