USMC6094

Thanks lol, some days I cant see past the puddle of filler I'm sanding Joel I agree with you, but for my reintroduction into the hobby, this and a few others like it I have stashed away, are just for learning and getting the basic skills back down. I have a stack of "oldies" that this one came out of all to be ceiling hangers for my nephew and two cousins that are in the 9 to 11 year old age range. Horror is being generous, lol.

And the seats and fuselage pylons. I'm on the final seam work and will hopefully be masking and painting in the next week or so.

major assemblies together again

then it was on to front end again, the canopy ans windscreen glass were separate pieces from the frames, so I double bubbled them and made one assembly which caused problems later, and I'm slowly working this to a solution

then came filling the seam at the front of the fin

every part of this model has needed filler somewhere, even the parts that you didnt have to cement to another part to form an assembly This was my biggest worry, the vertical tail, it had me running around looking for creative ways to get it on and solidly attached.

then the real work started, this kit is a filler sponge..............

then came cranking up the Badger, I preshaded with another RLM semigloss brown.

next came reinforcing the LONG horizontal fuselage seam

now for the drop tanks, when I say there wasnt an assembly on this model that didnt need filler in some way, I was not exaggerating lol

Here are a few more of the major assemblies together, just to check progress Mr. Surfacer is everywhere

one of our members here donated aircrew for this, and either the kits cockpits are out of scale or theres something wrong somewhere else. It took removing almost a third of the ejection seats volume to get the pilots fitted. But I digress, no one will notice it once its all buttoned up

Now sometime in the past I lost the kits forward(pilots) instrument panel and had to scratch build a new one. Once I got to painting I used an RLM semigloss grey for the front office color. I also reinforced the LONG seam on the forward fuselage with styrene stock

I have sanded, scraped, and filled so much on this kit that see those steps in my sleep I added a guard over the wing sweep gearing to reduce the chance of the wings popping out of the correct orientation

Let me just say, this kit is a MONSTER and it has eaten up CA, putty, and Mr. Surfacer like no kit I have ever built. These are all just pictures of me checking for trouble spots, and there are MANY

I also decided to make the wings moveable, its complicated construction and painting, but my cousins will like it

And since this going to be a ceiling hanger, everything is up, so the nose and main gear are buttoned up

I started with the wings, three parts each, but the flaps had a nice warp to them and the upper and lower halves had a slight warp as well. The I got industrious, and decided to pose the speed brakes open (this has since changed to closed) and I hinged them with straight pins....