Construction starts with the cockpit, and will be the main focus of this review, inasmuch as this is the one area that will provide any difficulty in construction.  To put it bluntly: if you get this wrong, you don't need to waste time with the rest of the kit.

      I mistakenly painted my cockpit British Interior Green; it should rather be flat black.  By the time I realized this, I had also discovered the difficulties that accrue to not getting things exactly right in this stage of construction, and had already botched one of the two canopies.  Being unwilling to risk damage to the only one I had left, I decided this would be a model of the special Hornet F.Mk.3 that left the factory in 1952 in an experimental British Interior Green finish to see if the cockpit could be cooled at all in tropical conditions found in Malaya with a cockpit that was not painted black.

      The big thing you have to accomplish in this part of construction is to be sure the resin cockpit insert will fit inside the fuselage halves easily; if you have to apply the least amount of force to glue the halves together in the vicinity of the cockpit, you didn't get the fit right, and will pay heavily when you attempt to fit the cockpit canopy in place.  When I do my next one, I will not only dremel down the main cockpit resin part, I will also dremel out the fuselage halves in the area of the cockpit, to insure an easy fit.  Things very tight here, and you will benefit from frequent test-fitting before applying any glue to these parts.

      Other than all the dremeling for fit, the parts of the cockpit go together easily and provide ample detail to look good under that big clear bubble canopy. 

     Once you have accomplished this and have the fuselage together, you have to deal with the one Really Difficult Problem of the project: the fact that the canopy is not correct.  As molded, the lower rear of the canopy is not shaped correctly, and will not fit properly if you do not modify it.  Cutting the outline shape of the canopy to the proper shape is easily done with fingernail scissors, though you will have to rescribe the canopy frame to get it right for painting.  Given the clarity of the canopy, and the fact that having it open really destroys the beautiful lines of this airplane, I chose to attach the canopy in the closed position. (One hopes that Falcon will quickly make an accurate canopy.)

      Those Who Know This Airplane Better Than I have pointed out that the way the nose is molded, you cannot accurately fit the windshield in place.  I chose to trim off the extreme front of the windscreen to fit the opening.  I have since learned that what I should have done - and will do on the next one - is to file down the coaming over the instrument panel, so that the windscreen as molded will fit over that coaming.  The way I did it looks good, and I doubt many would notice it was wrong had I said nothing, but here is the trick to doing it right rather than just getting it done.

      As regards the rest of the assembly, there are no problems in assembly, other than you must trim off about 1/16" from the crossbar of the retraction oleo in the landing gear so that the assembly will fit inside the wheel well.

      Some people have complained about the lack of detail inside the wheel well.  From the research I have available, it does not appear there really was all that much in there.  Once the model is assembled and is on the shelf, there's little to be seen.  If, however, you simply must have some detail there, I would suggest using some thin Evergreen strip to make internal structure following the panel lines on the outside of the engine nacelle.  I also thinned down the inner walls of the gear well opening, and the gear doors, which results in a much better fit of these parts in the open position.

      I assembled the wings without making any spars, butt-joining wings to fuselage the way the kit was designed, with no problem.  If you want to put in a spar, I would do two - one to fit into the wing immediately aft of the assembled radiator, and one about an inch further to the rear.

      The tail wheel as provided is completely inaccurate, since it should be an "anti-shimmy" wheel like that used on the Mosquito.  I cut off a section of sprue tree the right diameter, glued it between the two wheel halves, then sanded them down a bit in diameter and also sanded the wheel to make it thin enough to fit in the tail wheel fork.  This looks close enough, though I am aware there is an accurate tail wheel that will be included in the Cooper Details set for this kit.

 Painting:

      I pre-shaded the model, then painted it PRU Blue for the lower surface, mixing this color from both Gunze-Sangyo and Tamiya paints.  The upper surfaces were painted with Dark Ocean Grey from Tamiya and British Dark Green from Gunze-Sangyo.  Since these airplanes were camouflaged "in the field" (the original scheme being either overall silver or PRU Blue lower surfaces and Sea Grey Medium upper surfaces), I freehanded the scheme.  When all was dry, I gave the model a coat of Future.

 Decals:

      The kit decals are printed by MicroScale and went down with no problems under a coat of Micro-Sol.

     I had painted the prop spinners with Tamiya "Flat Blue,"  The props were attached, being careful to insure that the right prop went on the right engine - they rotate inward.  The landing gear and gear doors were attached.  The kit wheels are really for the F.Mk.1, the heavier F.M.3 using a slightly-larger tire - again, the Cooper Details set will have this wheel.

     The kit builds up into a convincing representation of the Hornet, and I like the model.  However, at nearly US$60.00 retail, I'd like to have seen MPM provide accurate wheels and the 200-gallon drop tanks, and a photo-etch instrument panel would have been better than the resin part provided.  I plan on using under wing rockets from a Hobbycraft Sea Fury to finish off the model later.  It ticks me off to have to say for those who want a really accurate model that they need to tack on another $20-odd dollars for the Cooper Details set, but it will improve the look.