Thank you all for your kind words guys. It's more than this ten-thumbed plastic-mangler deserves.
Anyway, after airbrush hurdles overcome, the -23 has made some faltering steps forward. I had quite a bit of trouble with seams and filling, particularly the gap left by the shorter length fin. This was eventually resolved by resorting to gap-filling cyano glue and activator. It's smooth now and as hard as tank armour
At the moment, it's primed with Tamiya XF-23. No particular reason for XF-23 save that it's light, close to the underside colour and I had four jars of it in stock. Some thinned matt black was used for pre-shading.
The odd-sized canopy is the Zvesda item (which illustrates the dimensional differences between the two kits) and is just there to protect the cockpit interior. The actual canopy isn't masked yet although it has had some surgery to allow it to be posed in the open position; adjustments made necessary by the resin cockpit insert.
The wings and tailplanes are just popped in for the picture at the moment. This was always the intention for the wings but has been necessitated for the tailplanes by the proximity of the shiny metal tail section and exhaust, which is masked off in the picture. It's not ideal but the fit of the parts looks to be very good (thanks Hasegawa
)
More updates soon.
,well tidy mun.
