Assembling and Painting the Fuselage and Canopy

Glued together fuselage halves, sanded away minor flashing from extruded plastic and filled in some areas with Tamiya putty. Put in prop spinner with bit of sprue glued to its back so that it can be freely rotated 

Lower fuselage half had some serious joining issues-supercharger intake had to be trimmed to shape before gluing and the intercooler section had large gaps (about a millimeter or so) when completed. 

The right wing sits fine with the fillet... 

... the left wing, however, does not. 

Drilled out the exhaust stacks... 

... as well as what the parts catalog refers to as the "downward position lights" and the landing light. 

The landing light exemplifies the poor result. 

Assembled the gear bay doors and puttied and sanded them in place. Later, the right one would fall off. 

I painted the where the canopy would sit black, as some of it might be visible through the canopy once placed. 

I also painted the K-14A/B gunsight, including silvering the two lenses. 

I painted the downward position lights and the landing lights silver, filling them in with various glues to see which one would finally stay right (I landed on CA glue, but it doesn't look too great in the final product) 

I cut a piece of clear sprue into a rough shape to fit the recess I had trimmed earlier, and cemented it in place with some putty. 

Once sanded into shape, the area I had drilled and filled with translucent paint becomes visible 

I added the PE versions of the two home-finding (AN-ARA-8) antennae and added some PVA glue to give them some volume. It didn't turn out so great and looked overscale in the final assembly so I won't be doing this next time. 

I decided to keep the kit's lower wing (AN-ARC-3?) antenna (AN104A as listed in parts catalog). It later broke off during sanding when fixing a painting mistake. 

In order to keep the pitot tube from breaking off and getting lost a third time (later I would find one of them stuck to the wall after it had flown out of my tweezers when trying to place it), I drilled some holes for a wire to support it when glued.