AA 1/48 Shenyang F-8IIM

Step one, according to the instructions, is to cement the splitter plate to the intakes. So, after painting the interior of them white, cleaning up the plates and the intake lips, I did just that. Then, before the glue dried, the intakes were glued to the side of the fuselage. Fit is not good. In fact, it is horrible. There is not guide, and only flooding the joins with glue and pressing will you eliminate most of the gaps. Naturally, the splitter plate stands proud of the side of the fuselage so some additional work is needed after the intakes are nice and firmly mounted. It took several coats of filler and some killer sandpaper to smooth things out.

While working on that, the wings and tail halves were glued together. Fit is very good. Then my attention turned to the cockpit. There is a tub, that crummy seat, and an instrument panel. No control stick is shown in the instructions, but there is a hole in the floor for one. In fact, even the instrument panel is not called for in the instructions! So I painted the cockpit black as I have only seen one image of the cockpit and that is the predominant color.  After doing that, I installed the cockpit tub, nose well, and underfuselage stabilizer into one fuselage half and then glued the two halves together. Fit wasn't bad, though not quite as good as the wings and stabilizer. Those huge alignment pins sure do the trick!

At this time, the exhaust piece was glued to the aft section. It is just a tad too large so was aligned at the bottom (remember that stabilizing fin) and glued in place. The wings were also glued on during this step and the whole assembly set aside to dry in preparation for any filling and filing. And filling is the key word here. Biggest offender is the wing/fuselage join. It seems that either there is supposed to be step between the wings and the wing root, or the wings are too narrow. Much filler was required. At this time I also glued on the fin. WHOA!! This puppy was not even close to being level. When finally dry, there was a monster gap on the left side. It also appears to be slightly warped to that side as well, but hopefully it won't be too noticable. Break out the filler and sandpaper for this one. The more construction gets underway, the more it seems like a Smer kit. While that doesn't mean bad, that does mean iffy fit.

After getting those areas cleaned up, it was time to install the nose. A weight was superglued into it prior to fitting. I had chosen not to install the radar screen in it and to glue the nose in place. Fit was as expected and the area had filler applied to smooth things out. Meanwhile, I went to work on the underwing stores. All the missiles have a number of ejector pin marks on them that need either filled or filed off. There are two drop tanks, but only one rack. The tank I will use had the locator pins removed prior to gluing together. The MER for the bombs is pretty poor so I am not going to use it. It will probably mean that I have to fill some holes in the wing underside.

Back in the cockpit, the instrument panel was glued into the anti-glare shield and that assembly glued in place. The instrument panel had to have a small section on the bottom removed to properly fit. I have an aftermarket K-36 seat to replace the kit one. This seat is too tall and had to have the bottom sanded down so it will fit. Once it was sanded down, it was painted a medium grey and then detailed. While this was being done, the canopy section was fit into place and the windscreen glued into position.

Since painting seats isn't exactly a one day deal for me, I returned to add some stuff to the airframe. There are some intakes at the back of the fuselage. Now the instructions are basically worthless in where these go other than pointing in the general direction of the back of the plane. The few images I have are equally unhelpful. This meant a bit of creative engineering. I figured where they might be on a MiG-21 and then punted from there. They were also sanded down a bit when dry to make them look like they were supposed to go there.

Once the seat was painted, it was installed in the cockpit along with the thing that, I guess, is supposed to be the control stick. The interior was then drybrushed and the canopy glued in place. Once that was done, the actuating arm in the back of the canopy and the lump on the back of the fuselage spine were sanded smooth and filled. Also filled were the inner mounting holes under the wings. The only thing I could put there would be the bomb racks and they are just too toy-like to install.

Once filled, sanded and smoothed, the canopy was masked with Scotch tape and it was on to the paint shop.

As much as I would have liked to have painted this aircraft in any other color, those references I found only showed them in white. Now white is a read pain to paint, mainly because it takes a zillion coats to cover and it tends to bleach out all the details. After several sessions with the Testors Modelmaster Gloss white, I had a painted aircraft. This single sentence covers about 10 days, as gloss paint takes forever to really cure. It is dry to the touch in just a few hours, but curing takes several days. The old adage about paint is: 'If you can still smell it, it isn't cured' comes is one most modelers should heed. It will save all sorts of paint problems, especially if you are painting with more than one type or brand of paint.