Construction begins with the cockpit.  The floor and rear bulkhead are plastic and the seat and control stick are resin.  The floor and bulkhead were glued together then test fit into the two fuselage halves.  The fit was remarkably good, especially given my experience with other short run kits.  Very little sanding was required to get an excellent fit.  The interior, including the molded in detail on the two fuselage halves were painted with Model Master Interior Green as was the scalloped areas of the rear quarters.  The seat and control stick were also painted Interior Green at this time.  After this had dried, the various details were picked out using flat black acrylic paint.  Seat belts made out of thin strips of masking tape was added to the seat.  Buckles for the belts were made using thickened silver paint.  The seat and control column were then glued to the floor.  Next a wash of Raw Umber artist's oil paints was brushed over the interior parts.  After this dried dry brushing was done with Interior Green, followed by two lightened shades of Interior Green. 

The resin instrument panel is very nicely done and includes molded in rudder pedals.  This was painted Aeromaster RLM 66 (a very nice scale black color!)  After this had dried, the various instrument pips were picked out using a VERY sharp white artist's pencil.  Next a drop of Future was added to each dial to represent the instrument faces.  The completed instrument panel was glued (using "super" glue) to the right side fuselage half along with the plastic tail wheel floor.  The instrument panel's fit was very nice requiring no sanding to get it to fit correctly.  However, the tail wheel floor did require a little sanding to get an acceptable fit.  The fuselage halves were then glued together.  As I imagined, some filling and sanding were required to get everything to close up nicely.

The nose is in two separate pieces with a useable Cyclone engine facsimile done in resin to be trapped between the two halves.  I painted the interior of the nose halves Testors Zinc Chromate Yellow doing the tail wheel well, inner portion of the tail wheel doors, and the inner potions of the main gear doors at the same time.  The engine itself was painted a dark metallic color, washed with Black artist's oil color, then drybrushed with lighter shades of metallics to highlight the cooling fins, etc.  The engine sits too low in the cowling, which would lead to unfortunate results later.

The lower wing is one piece to which two round wheel well inserts are glued.  Then the two upper wing halves were added.  The fit here was very good with only a little filling and sanding being required.  The wheel wells were painted Zinc Chromate Yellow and, when dry, masked using Silly Putty.  That's right, Silly Putty.  It's cheap, it's malleable, it conforms to the wheel wells, and is easy to remove.  Don't, however, use it on a wheel well with a lot of complex detail molded into it.  The Silly Putty can still be removed once painting is done, but the process is much more time consuming.

The engine cowl/nose, wing assembly, and horizontal tails were added to the fuselage.  The tails are only butt jointed to the vertical tail, so some careful filling and sanding were required to get a good fit yet avoid losing that nice detail that I mentioned earlier.  The nose and wing joints require a massive amount of filling and sanding before an acceptable fit could be achieved. 

At this time the vacform canopy was carefully separated from its backing material, trimmed and added to the cockpit.  The fit of the main canopy was excellent, surprising me just a little.  Non-fogging super glue was used for attaching the canopy.  As expected, the side panels were a bear to cut out and get to fit the side-scalloped areas of the canopy.  I never did achieve a satisfactory fit despite much filling and sanding.  Again non-fogging super glue was used to attach these parts.