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I have had this in the stash for quite awhile, and this seems like a good time to build it. It is a fairly typical short run kit with a resin cockpit and vac canopy. There is just one sprue of plastic and even much of that won't be used since it has many pieces that duplicate the resin ones.

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I worked on this the last week and finished it up tonight, although I kept forgetting to take in progress pictures. The cockpit is typical resin, but it also fits well without having to sand the fuselage down, if anything it was actually a little too narrow expect for the instrument panel which took some trimming to get to fit well. The vac canopy wasn't too bad, although the fit isn't perfect. The plastic landing gear and doors are simplified, but sturdy enough. I really like the arrangement for the nose wheel well, it is molded on a large resin block along with the engine detail that can be seen and this eliminates the need to use any weight to balance it. It is just enough to keep it on the nose gear.

The decals went on well, but the national insignia has soft detail and the bleeds onto the white some, but it was good enough. The rest of the decals went on well. I primed the kit with Mr. Surfacer and polished that and then originally used Vallejo Metal Air but that left an uneven finish with a different tones and since this is painted aluminum I didn't want that so I went over it with Alclad. That worked alright in light coats but it a few places it predictably attacked the Vallejo, but some sanding a repainted smoothed it back out.

There are some flaws, but this was a quick build and I'm happy with it. It is neat little plane to put on the shelf, and it is interesting to see the size difference compared to the other fighters of the day. I included a picture of it with my previous Test Birds entry, and F6F-3 Hellcat and you can see how tiny this plane was.

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