Bell XP-77

Off we go! 

Did remowe most of the parts from the sprue, the amount of flash is overwhelming. 

Note the sink marks and the sprue attachment. 

Filled all the sink marks on the parts with pattex superglue 

Cleaned up the wing today and deepened the first wheel well. Did use pattex sos glue to fill the edges. I can not reccomend this glue enough - it works far better than any filler and is easy to sand. I use it also as glue where possible as it gives a strong join. 

Deepend the second wheel well and removed the injection stubs. The plastic is very hard to sand but very easy prone to overscraping wit a scalpel blade. This is going to be a greater challenge than the hawk. 

Managed to cut of and sand the resin from the castings block, unfortunately breaking the rear cockpit wall in the proces. Glued it and the control stick to the tub with pattex sos glue. Additionaly i managed to prime the resin parts. 

Dry fitted the resin inserts - they fit very good to the fuselage halves - no sidewall trimming needed. After that I primed the back portion of the seat and the insides of the fuselage. 

First layer on the resin parts and fuselage interior painted. If prefer to brush paint small parts in this scale. The Ranger V770 on 99% of pictures i have seen was pained Neutral Gray, so I went with this suggestion. The instruction states that it was black. 

Second layer on. Started some detail painting in the cockpit and did clean up some of the kits parts. 

Did some rought preliminary detail painting on the seat and engine - it will be corrected after the second layer. Need to get sone rust and copper colors from my workbench in Germany to finish the engine detail paintig. Did also test fit the exaust ports to the fuselage sides - much trimming was needed for both the ports and fulelage to get a good fit. You can see the difference - lower on the picture is the fuselage side which is allready corrected. 

More datail painting and silver drybrushing for the seat and cockpit. Small corrections needed, the camera catches more than my eyes. Next a coat of clear flat and a dark wash awaits. 

Managed to glue the cockpit together, working on parts cleanup, which is extremely difficult due to the plastic beeing extremely sanding paper resistant. Reworking the exhaust system to beter match the original. 

Cleaned up all of the parts and sanded them to 2500 grit, now they are ready for priming. Assembled the propeller and glued the engine front in one of the fuselage sides. 

Primed the small parts with the 1st layer of Tamiya spray matt black. 

Did prime the other side of the small parts with the 1st layer of tamiya black matt. Rescribed one side of the fuselage as the original scribing was almost invisible and added a document pocket to make the cocpit a bit more busy. 

Glued the wheel bay and cockpit to the fuselage side today. No issues with fit. 

Progress so far. Added weight to the fuselage an closed it. Managed to paint most of the small parts also. Fit was good in regards of joining the fuselage. A long sanding session awaits in order to get a smooth effect before adding black primer. Also rescribed the panel lines as they were too shalow. Also need to rework the exhaust in the closed position as depicted on the reference I got. 

Update: scribed the lover wing using photo s and the 1:48 czech model kit as references. Small corrections will be needed but under a few coats of black primer and then silver the effect will be ok. 

The fight continues. Rescribed the right side and reworked the exhaust according to photos and the czech model kit. Painted all the small bits. Looks maybe a bit rough on the picture but pretty much ok for the normal eye - it will be refined before priming. 

The fight continues. Did attach the wings to the fuselage, the fit was very poor. I filled the gaps with pattex sos glue which I use as filler with very good results. Sanded one side with 800 grit sanding paper and got a flush join. 

Done also with the other side with rescribing, reshaping of the exhhaust system anf filling and sanding gaps between the wing and the fuselage. The underside awaits. 

Work continues. Rescribed and scribed all the missing detail as seen on period photos. Got over the hardest part which was canopy attachment. Dipped it with a german equivalent of future clear first, then fitted it to the fuselage and carefully worked around it with super glue to good effect. Need to do this a few times in order to blend the canopy into the fuselage. There were some gaps between the canopy and fuselage but they were filled succesfully with super glue. 

Completed the sanding around the canopy. I am very satisfied with the result. It is maybe not visible on the picture but I managed to get a flush connection of the canopy to the fuselage. 

Attached the horizontal stabilisers with pattex gel glue to have time to tweak their position as they do not have any attachment points. Had to sand both to get a similar look as one was bigger as the other. It is ready for painting, now on to test the eduard panel decals and to see how they stick to the plastic and react to tamiya spray paints. 

Propeller done.