Do you know what, I'm amazed - Airfix has made a pretty good go at replicating the tube structure of the cockpit and it
actually blooming well fitted together!
Stupid building method though, as you can see, Airfix suggest you start building up the structure onto the loose spars BEFORE you fit it all to the wings.... Yeah no... (bearing in mind this is made form their speciality floppy grey plastic!) no way is that going to work without major alignment issues!
Before John even suggested it, I'd had the idea of fitting the spars to the wing and building the cockpit around, I just didn't know it would work - so thanks John for sharing the link to your build photos as you confirmed it would...
(great minds and all that
)
I also had to build up the U/C bays and gun bay walls too, to give the spars some structure.
It's actually a nicely detailed cockpit (this is only the bottom, the IP goes into the fuselage halves).
I lost count of the number of parts. It's also quite fragile thanks to the bendy plastic, but should hold together long enough to get painted and into the fuselage.
Mind you, these highly detailed cockpits are all very well, but even in this scale nothing of it is going to be seen once the canopy is on - makes you wonder what the point is?
Cheers!
