Thunnus

So sorry to hear about the eye issues, Mike! I see the decal and like the progress! The RLM02 interior color is so much more interesting than the dark RLM66 color that I'm always having to use.

Thanks for sharing! Especially the mishap with the engine nacelle. I'm sure everyone has had those types of things happen every once in a while and your recovery should be an unnoticeable repair! I'm glad my Trumpeter build could be of some use to you!

Wonderful! I love the intricate plumbing in the wheel well! I also stumbled onto the idea of gluing the wheel wells together but not onto the wings.

I remember this build, Kirby! Yes, the kit is amazing but the work you performed on her is wonderful! I think watching this build unfold planted the seed in my mind to try and tackle the Tamiya F4U-1a kit myself. Thank you for the inspiration!

I got some paint on the tail wheel...

Thanks gents! Still in a holding pattern on this build but there is some movement on the latch decals. Hopefully, I'll them soon. In the meantime, I've decided to start on some of the post-shading...

Yes, I mentioned that in the text. The kit tires are smooth so I have the option but something in me doesn't like that irregularity. And who knows... it was probably a temporary condition.

Playing around with some of the landing gear bits. I've cleaned up the Barracuda resin wheels. This is a pair of treaded tires. I've also assembled one of the kit tires, which portrays the smooth, non-tread tire. Interestingly, photos of Yellow 10 seem to show that it has one treaded tire and one smooth. I'm not sure if I'm going to portray that peculiarity or not but I'm prepared to do so. Drilled out some lightening holes and added some bits to the oleo scissors. Mounted on the Synthetic Ordnance Works landing gear... I love the shiny metal without having to paint it! Don't mind that mold seam... Damian has thoughtfully put it on the side of the landing gear doors.

Thanks Troy! Paint job is a long way off so I've got time to digest that crazy scheme and try to make sense of JaPo and Crandall's conflicting interpretations. But I'm gonna take a pause from building this weekend as I'm scheduled to go... bass fishing! Yee haw! Thanks Alain! Yes, you are right. The Ta152H used both styles... Ta152H-0 WNr 150010 Ta152H-1 WNr 150167 Ta152H-0 WNr 150003 Fw190D-13 WNr 836017

Ahhh... You're doing 836016! Excellent choice and I don't feel AS BAD doing Yellow 10 now!

After much more futzing with the fuselage interior and the external edges of the resin cockpit, I've arrived at a place where feel good about the fit. This is not an exact science since there is a lot of give and play with taped components but a good indication of how things will go when glue is eventually applied. The cockpit is taped into the fuselage. Without unnecessary force and accounting for the taped joints, the cockpit looks to be in proper position. Forcing the cockpit into position may push the canopy opening too wide so I want to check the position of these components as well. With only gravity holding them in place, the engine cowling, the instrument panel hood, the windscreen and sliding canopy appear to be in good position. Didn't take photos but I've also conducted a preliminary check of the rear engine plug assembly that is visible from the open wheel wells. Some modifications will be necessary to account for the single ammo chute but I haven't solved that riddle yet.

Thanks for that photo of the cannon breech, Kais. It looks to be tucked behind the foot pedals so I'm not going to worry about representing it in my cockpit. After trimming the resin cockpit parts, I cobbled them together using tape. You can see how limited the view is of anything forward of the instrument panel. Some surgery needs to be performed to accommodate the Eagle Editions cockpit. The easy part is sawing off the instrument panel hood and replacing it with the resin hood. A fit check to make sure that all of the components, including the windscreen and canopy, go together without any issues. Now comes the tedious part. The insides of the fuselage need to be thinned considerably. This work has begun but I'm nowhere near the recommended amount of thinning.

This is such a valuable reference for anyone tackling the SH Tempest kit! If I ever start mine, I'm gonna be referring to this build constantly!

Thanks guys! Not the usual approach, especially having purchased both conversion sets. At least I'll be able to utilize components from both sets. The wing insert panel has been dealt with. Looks a mess now but it should be work out nicely under a coat of paint. Now I'm going to take a look at the Henri Daehne resin prop. This one is almost identical to the Ta152H prop that I just used except the prop mount is geared toward the Hasegawa D-9 kit. Surprisingly, there is a part missing... the backing washer that aligns the prop shaft from behind the radiator face is missing. Luckily, I have a bunch of HD D-9 props so I fished the missing part from one of those. There is some removal of casting blocks to deal with but Mr. Daehne provides a fully detailed instruction sheets with exact dimensions which takes the guessing out of cleanup. The rounded blade tips are the distinguishing feature between the D-13 and the Ta152H. I double check the fit of the HD prop to the fuselage... Finally jumping over what's normally the first step of any build... the cockpit! The Eagle Editions cockpit for the D-9 is molded in a light-colored resin. This is not a plug-n-play set and will require some removals and shaving of the fuselage insides to make it fit. I have limited references on the D-13 cockpit and I'm not sure how accurate these references are. But I went ahead and made some changes based on the photos found in Mr. Crandall's Dora Volume 2. The D-13 has a cannon firing through the spinner and the cannon breech supposedly intrudes into the cockpit between the rudder pedals. I've never seen a photo of this breech but I think the center section of the instrument panel will hide it. The Eagle Editions cockpit comes with a bomb-control panel that seems to sorta kinda of match the panel in the photo. The starboard console looks very similar to the console in the Ta152H. Coincidentally, I have the kit pieces for both consoles from the Ta152H build since I used the RB Productions photo etch replacements. It's a pretty easy grafting job to put the Ta152H panel onto the D-9 cockpit. The port console is close enough to keep as is. Now that the D-13 changes to the cockpit have been mapped out, I'll have to start cutting up the kit fuselage to make it all fit.

Just for reference, here are the cross-sections of the D-13 that indicate that the bulge was only evident along the top edge and not the bottom as depicted in the GM resin conversion... I thinned the edges of the cowling flaps. Again, the D-13 is slightly different than the D-9 in that ALL of the cowling flaps are extendable. On the D-9, there is a fixed cowling flap on the starboard side. I cut the fixed flap off and replaced it with a piece of brass sheet. I COULD replace ALL of the flaps with brass sheeting but I elected not to. As long as the trailing edges are thinned, I think the plastic flaps look fine. On my past D-9 builds, I erroneously assumed that the outline of the wing insert piece were along panel lines but this is incorrect. So after I glued the insert pieces into place, I filled the non-panel line joints with black CA glue.

Wonderful! Your finishes are always impeccable!

Cockpit is looking great, especially the IP. Strange situation with the Revell fuselage seeming to have lost 2mm from one copy to another.

Thanks people! The more I think about the bulge, the less I'm inclined to change it. I'm thinking that it is probably more in line with what the actual aircraft designers did when trying to accommodate the larger engine bearers and is supported by the profile drawings. It just doesn't jump out at first glance. A few minor adjustments were performed per my references. The fuel port on the starboard side is slightly LOWER on the D-13 than the D-9... And the primer fuel port on the port sides is slightly HIGHER on the D-13 than the D-9... After some slight touch-up putty was applied, the fuselage was set aside and took out the Eagle Editions tail gear. The parts go together rather well but I'm going to strengthen the connection between the parts using brass tubing. I made an axle for the tail wheel. A larger diameter brass tube was used for the connection between the wheel yoke and gear strut. The "sit" of the tail gear can be adjusted by shortening the strut. Without modification, you can see that the gear sticks out a little too much, based on reference photos. So I cut down the strut for a more naturally weighted position of an aircraft in service.

Excellent! I love the salt fading and use it on most of my builds but those salt crystals can be a pain. A clear flat will really trigger it so now do the salt fading AFTER all of my clear coats.

The foundation for this conversion is the "bulge" and that is what I have been working on yesterday and today. Because it takes so long for Milliput to harden, progress has been slow but I've finally reached a rough approximation of the what bulges will look like. Using the pieces of styrene as a guide and base, I've applied Milliput to build up the bulge and transition it back to the fuselage. The pieces of sheet plastic created some issues for me. I thought they were thin enough so they would conform to the curvature of the fuselage. I even took extra care of securing the top joint firmly with Tamiya Extra Thin cement, waiting that to cure and then gluing down the bottom joint. Still, the plastic sheet ended up being too flat and I've had to add a bead of putty down the middle of the white plastic to create a more uniformly curved surface. This took multiple applications of Milliput, with each of them allowing to cure at least 4-6 hours before sanding. In the down time, I ended up painting the seat from the Eagle Editions cockpit, which comes with two versions: one with belts and one without. I'll probably end up using HGW harnesses but I thought I'd see what the other seat would like like with a quick paint job. After a few iterations of puttying and sanding, I've gotten to a point where the bulge has been established and curvature of the sides of the fuselage have been restored. Unlike the GM resin fuselage, I've elected to transition the bottom edge of the raised area cleanly into the fuselage, creating a single "ridge" along the top edge and not a bulge with an upper and lower edge. This is based on the cross-sections of the D-13 in my Dora Volume 2 book. Time to shoot this sculpting exercise with the some primer to check my work. I used Mr Surfacer 1200 cut with Tamiya Lacquer Thinner. Hey, where did the bulge go? That's what I thought after I sprayed the primer on. My result is much more subtle than the GM conversion. I can definitely see it in person and also feel it when I run my fingers over the model but it doesn't show up very dramatically in the photos. Is this a good thing or bad thing? The lack of panel lines or other details adds to the disappearing act and I think the rivet lines will accentuate the curvature. But the disruption camo pattern will do the opposite and help hide the surface curvature. I'm going to set this aside and think about it. There are some edges and transitions that need to be cleaned up... maybe during that process I'll end up liking my result a little more.

I did take another look at both the GM and Real Model D-13 cowlings. Most notably, the top flat section near the rear edge flares out more drastically on the GM cowling. Looking at the cowlings in profile... The Real Model cowling has a very noticeable curvature, while the GM profile is flatter. Looking at reference photos of the D-13, I can't see evidence of this pronounced curvature. It looks like each of the cowlings has its good points and bad points. The GM cowling fits better in my particular case, so I'm going with it.

With LSP down for a few days, I'll have to fast forward some of the progress on the D-13 build that I've accomplished during that time. I was comparing the kit exhausts with the Quickboost resin versions. I started cleaning the sprue attachments and one thing led to another... I ended up hollowing out all of the kit exhausts. The hollowed ends are noticeably deeper than the dimples on the Quickboost set, which will be put back in the aftermarket box for a future build. I took another look at the Aires wheel wells. Some people here threw out some options and I thought I should give them consideration before giving up . For me, keeping the long bulkhead in correct relation to the wheel well was important so that the cannon mount on the bulkhead lined up with the hole for the gun barrel in the wheel well. So using that as a constant, the only other way to effectively increase the width of the wheel assembly was to cut it, which was one of Vincent's suggestions. I chose to cut it in half. The kit gun barrels are standing in for what will ultimately be brass tubing. The wheel wells are then placed into the lower wing using the gun barrel as the datum. This results in three small gaps but they really shouldn't be noticeable. The biggest effort about going in this direction was removing the wide casting block on the wheel wells... whatta pain. With the Blue Tack holding the wheel wells in place, I tape the upper wing halves into place. The gun barrels are correctly positioned. The gap in the center is the most noticeable but remember... there is a central exterior piece yet to be added. The Grey Matter part, with the single ammo chute fits very nicely (surprise!) and blocks the view into the wheel well. Now the gap is hardly noticeable. I think this is a good compromise to get the Aires wheel well to work. My only concern is the landing gear actuating arm. Since the distance between the landing gear mounting location and the wheel well has been increased, there is a good chance that the actuator will be too short. But that shouldn't be too hard to correct. Oh... and the sculpting process has started.

Thanks so much for the photograph, Milsoslav! That is a great view of the cowling. I can see some of the differences between the photo and the Grey Matter part. Not a game changer for me but I can see your point. I'll compare the Real Model cowling to the photo when I get home.

Thanks Damian! I feel more comfortable establishing a physical baseline for the sculpting. I call those "hitchhikers"! When I was in Alaska, we were catching huge lingcod that were way bigger than the slot limit. As I was reeling in a smaller one, I could feel it suddenly get heavier and sure enough, there was big ole lingcod trying to eat the smaller one. It was funny because the captain thought the smaller one was within the slot limit and started hitting the bigger fish with a net to make him let go. Additional forms to establish the base of the bulges have been added. After this dries, I'll start sculpting with Milliput.

Wow... that looks great! Almost a shame to cover this with paint!