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This is the Czech Model kit of the Skyknight. Building it was a real adventure from the banana shaped fuselage halves to the canopy-from-hell. I'll never complain about the fit of Monogram kits again.

The kit decals were a mixed bag. They were very thin and nicely printed, but the red markings were a dull maroon color. I had custom decals made to replace them (thanks to Joseph at Fireball Modelworks).

Paints used were Floquil, Model Master, and Alclad.

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Thanks for the compliments! A few pointers for anyone building this kit:

1) You must dry-fit extensively before you can glue anything together. The fit was especially bad in these areas:

- Nacelles to fuselage

- Fuselage halves

- Canopy to fuselage

- Cockpit to fuselage

- Main wheel wells to wings

The wings mount to the fuselage with a simple butt join, but the fit was not so bad here. I reinforced the attachment using a couple of small brass tubes as spars.

2) If you're building the VMFN-513 version as I did then please note that this aircraft had had no markings on the upper surface of the right wing. It also lacked the tail wheel bumper and the tail hook. There are photos of this plane in the Ginter F3D book that confirm this (see pg. 46).

3) The kit is molded with a prominent ridge-like feature on the forward section of the right fuselage half. It runs from the wing to the radome, but none of the F3Ds in the Ginter book had such a feature, so I sanded it off.

4) Add some weight to the nose, otherwise you'll have a tail-sitter.

5) The main gear struts are too long, and they give the model an un-realistic tail-high stance. I shortened the struts by about .25" to correct this.

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