AX 365

I don't visit he site for a couple of weeks and look what I missed! You're really going to town, aren't you. Looking forward to this build ALF. Builds always take on more of a special meaning when there's a personal relationship. Game on!

Cool scheme. She turned out very nicely pal. Well done.

Nope. Taking a pass this year. Enjoy the show. Hope it's a good one.

Many apologies for the long hiatus. Got into a bit of a funk but I junked that funk and we're back at it. The drop tanks were primed with flat black and then sprayed with Alclad II Aluminum. The caps were painted with Model Master Guards Red. The main canopy had a faint mould line down the middle. I scraped most of it off with a new #11 blade. I then masked each side of the line and then sanded with finer grits of sanding sticks, wet sanding with 4000 grit paper and sanding pads. I then manually polished with toothpaste on a Q-Tip and finally dipped in a b

Nice work, ALF. Some interesting engineering and assembly in that kit.

I'd play.

Nice tribute to the old boy. Am looking forward to your progress ALF.

Thanks ALF. As I opined during our phone chat, the big test will be the fit of the cowls. Hopefully there won't be any gaps. If push really comes to shove, I think there is enough surface area for Tamiya tape to grasp to around the exposed Merlinand then filling in the gaps with more tape, paper (possibly) and liquid mask should do the trick. 🤞

That turned out quite nicely, sire. Well done.

Clamshell doors assembled. Brake lines attached to gear struts. Scissor links also attached. There's a small piece of PE that must be folded over the link and attached with CA glue. Hubs were primed black and sprayed Aluminum. They press fit into the rubber tires. The tail wheel tire is plastic. Go figure. Drop tanks assembled. This version calls for the teardrop shaped tanks. There are also a set of the paper / resin tanks supplied for the filletless tail version.

As I noted in a previous post, this kit can be built in such a way that it can be displayed gear down or in flight on a stand. As I'm building it strictly gear down here's the insert for the tailwheel assembly. The gear up pose has the same body but closed doors instead of open. Both are 'plug & play'. Next, the undercarriage parts and ammo bay doors were blackbased and painted. Continued in next post.

The wings have been glued to the fuselage. The join is painless and quite smooth. In the photo above, you'll not a square with a hole in it on the landing gear leg. That's how the removable landing gear are attached. A small threaded bolt slides through that hole. It is screwed into the nut inside this part (referred to in an earlier post) in the wing. You can just make out the silver nut in the wing part. I haven't attached them yet as I'm still constructing the landing gear. I've also built up the radiator intake

The wings have been assembled. The flaps can be posed either up or down. If you wanted to have them in the up position permanently, you'll notice a small curved piece at the end of the inboard side of the flap. These are glued into place for the flaps in the down position. For permanently up, leave them off and you can glue the flaps in the up position. The small hinges for the aileron slide into the slots quite easily and don't require any glue to hold them in place. They are adjustable should you decide a dynamic pose. Next up is to glue th

Painted and installed ammo trays and feed chutes. As noted above, they're not perfect but I'm okay with the results. In retrospect, the feed chutes should have been left off until I painted the wings the aluminum colour. They were easy to install and leaving them off would have facilitated placing the gun and ammo tray covers over the opening to paint the wings. Oh well. The kit supplies two sets of covers because of the way the kit is moulded. The three piece covers on the real aircraft are moulded as one piece in the kit. Hence, there are four, one-piece moulded covers. One set could

The main gear bay and spar have been glued onto the lower wing assembly. Again, the fit is very good. The gun trays have been assembled. The part with three holes where the barrels protrude is PE and slides into slots at the front of the one piece tray. And black based and painted. Guns have been assembled from two halves and painted Model Master Enamel 'Gunmetal'. There are specific guns for specific slots in the tray. Ejection chutes and chargers have been painted Testors Flat Alumin