As with most resin kits, the instructions provided for the build are minimal.  Jaeger supplies a little 4-page booklet with a general text guide for assembly, along with 3 photographs of the model both partially and fully assembled.   My initial problem was to match all the parts to the parts list.  This was a bit difficult because the very small resin detail parts had a bit of flash on them that obscured what they really were.  The same can be said for the small detail white metal parts.  It took me all of about 30 minutes to sort this all out.  One part I could never find was the flare pistol that is supposedly cast in resin.   Perhaps it was missing, perhaps it was so flashed I could not perceive it as a pistol?

Fuselage:

            The fuselage is a single piece casting with the cockpit interior hollowed out.  This casting is just superb.  Excellent detail both on the outside and the inside.  One thing I really liked is that the fuselage walls around the cockpit are so thin  you can see light through it, with the shading provided by the cast-in structural members.   On the real aircraft, this area was fabric covered and the same effect could likely be perceived depending upon how the aircraft was painted.  I thought that was so cool considering I have seen modelers sand the fuselage almost paper thin on some injection molded kits in an attempt to achieve the same effect.

             Most of the cockpit detail is assembled onto a two-piece resin floor that is fitted to the fuselage from the bottom.  As you assemble the detail, make sure you dry fit the floor into the fuselage often.  With camera, floor hatch and all that stuff installed to the floor assembly it would be a shame if some of the parts just hung over the edge enough so it wouldn’t fit inside the cockpit.  The entire cockpit assembly took me no more than 2 or 3 hours to build, and a majority of that time was spent painting the interior of the one-piece fuselage and detailing out the cast-in fuselage members.   Once the floor is installed, it fit nicely and model putty hid any seams.  Fuselage finished.

 Wings, Engine, Exhaust - General Fit:

             Wings, engine, exhaust......why on earth did I lump all these together into one general heading?  Because the wing fit affects the cabane fit, which affects the engine fit, which affects the exhaust fit.  I found this out the hard way and actually lucked out some in that my “eyeball” technique and primitive wing jigs came through sufficiently for me to get an adequate fit.

             Ok.... here’s where it starts.  The lower wing attaches to the fuselage.  As with all the resin kits I have ever seen there are no alignment pins!.  The only guide is the low relief wing roots cast into the fuselage sides.  The lower wings mount to these roots and I would strongly suggest you build a primitive jig to aid in the fitting of the wings.  This becomes apparent when you realize that the fuselage floor you just glued in place has a high relief detail that will not allow the fuselage to sit flat on the table.  I had to raise the fuselage up on a jig so it could sit plumb to my workbench with clearance for that bit of underside detail.  I had detected this potential problem earlier and toyed with the idea of mounting the wing to the fuselage and then mounting the flooring.  I gave up on this because the floor actually provides stiffening to the thin-cast fuselage in that area (remember - light can come through!). My fear in discarding this approach was that I would have the wings glued in with CA, they would be misaligned,  and then I would have to stop for a few glasses of wine before I continued!.  I decided to play it safe and go with a finished fuselage assembly to mount the lower wings to.

             I double-checked the wing root casting to the scale drawings in the datafile and also drew some alignment marks on a piece of paper that I taped my little jig to.  I  glued the wings in place, making sure I eyeballed the angle of attack of the wings to look about right.  The lower wing angle of attack is critical because it will affect the strut fit and upper wing angle of attack, which in turn affects the mounting of the center cabane strut.  If this seems complicated, it really isn’t when you see the kit.  You just have to plan ahead.

             The lower wings fit to the wing roots with just a bit of sanding.  As per my usual procedure, I proceeded to fit the stabilizer and tail so I could putty the entire assembly at one time.  The stabilizer pieces just glue to the fuselage without the aid of any pre-cast roots or anything else to align with.  I used my data file drawings to pencil in mounting guides for these pieces.

             After filling any seams I painted this assembly, set it aside for 24 hours, and proceeded to study the upper wing mounting.

 Upper Wings:

             The center cabanes are actually two white metal arcs glued together that meet above the centerline of the fuselage.  Each upper wing half mounts to the side of this cabane.  To get a good fit it becomes obvious that the cabane mounting will affect the angle of attack of the upper wing.  My first gasp for air was at this point.   Did my lower wing angle of attack match the upper wing?  Yes - not perfect, but pretty good!  Once I found I was clear of this potential disaster, I mounted the white metal struts to the underside of the upper wings and did about 10 dry fits to the cabane to see if the pre-drilled strut mounting holes in the lower wing aligned.  Fit looked good and I attribute that to Jaeger’s excellent engineering rather than to my meager skill level.  Before I committed to gluing in place I taped the upper wings to the cabane to fix alignment and then glued the struts to the lower wings.

 Engine.

             The engine fit is tight.  I fitted the engine to the fuselage after I mounted the cabane arcs, but before I mounted the upper wings.  There is some engine plumbing to install here and doing that around mounted upper wings would be difficult.  Here is where I noticed that my engine was not properly placed relative to the cabane struts because a dry fit of my exhaust assembly would not clear the struts and properly mount to the engine. 

             I finally yanked the engine out using CA remover and did lots of dry fits with double sided scotch tape and the exhaust to get a good fit.  I ended up doing the plumbing around the upper wing mounts in the long run.  I got a good fit, not perfect, but adequate.  Notice that my engine is canted to the right a few degrees.  No , Candice did not go blind.  The actual engine was mounted in the aircraft that way to get it to fit! 

 Final Assembly:

             Once past the engine exhaust fit, the airplane is essentially on short final!  The only detail that took me awhile to assemble was Copper State Model’s 1/48 Parabellum machine gun.  It is a resin and photo-etch gun assembly that looks great when finished.  I have always had problems with very small photo etch, though I am getting better at it.  I decided to persevere with the gun, but for those without the patience the CSM gun can be replaced with an Aeroclub white metal gun.  My CSM gun took me about 4 hellish hours to build, but it looks a lot better than a white metal Aeroclub gun ever will.

 Painting:

 Thanks to Jaeger Miniatures for the review kit.Review kit courtesy of my kit collection.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact the editor or see other details in the Note to Contributors.

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