This is all Thomas´ fault! His build of Special Hobbys De Havilland DH-100 in swedish livery (scalemates.com/profi..s&album=77364#66) prompted me to act against my serious intention not to start another "in-betweeen-project" until finishing some of the already started ones.
So, here I am. Let´s see how I got there...
Special Hobbys DH-100 are nice kits, but they do not fall together like the Mystere did. The classic layout of two wing halves (upper and lower) results in rather thick trailing edges. So I thinned them. Same I did with vertical and horizontal stabilizers.
I refrained from aftermarket sets for the cockpit as not much will be seen with the canopy closed. The build is straightforward. Instrument decal is ok - but not more than that.
I tripple checked the seat as it looked pretty bleak but the early versions delivered to Switzerland had no ejection seat. I only added some seat belts from my spares.
I read Thomas´ build log too late again and missed his advise on tailsittingprevention. Yes, I had added weight (all of the nose cone is filled with lead) but that was way too little. So I had to improvise. White glue was poured into the center of the wing root and lead granules were pushed into it. I stuffed in as much as I could - double checking, that nothing could be seen through the air intakes.
attaching the wings required some careful scraping and dry fitting too. This way I could achieve a fit good enough to leave no gap on the top sides. At the downside the left gap could be filled with superglue and at the right wingroot I added some styrene too..
Special Hobby provides clear wing tips to ease masking of the position lights. This is a nice feature but unfortunately not correct - at least not for the Swiss version. Here only the light bulbs were colored and the clear parts were - well - clear.
I cut out the position lights to drill a hole for the bulb. But those pieces were too fiddely to handle for me. So I took pieces from clear plastic sheets, sanded the connecting areas, drilled the holes for the bulbs and colored them.
I used Ammo of Mig Ultra Glue to attach the pieces but this glue did not hold nothing. So I broke the shaped pieces off again and used regular superglue to fix them. Now I could sand them to shape.
I was considering to paint the red parts but then decided against it. The decals worked without issues. The big ones settled down nicely with Micro Set and Sol.
Now only the canopy needs to be polished, its frame painted and the two conterbalance weights at the stabilizer added. Unfortunately I lost one, so will have to scratch the second one as the spare box did not provide something useful.
As this plane was stationed in Dübendorf I was looking for a picture with the characteristic Hangar of this airfield. It is printed out on photopaper and glued to a wooden sheet.
the counter weights of the horizontal stabilizer proofed to be a real headache and delayed final assembly considerably. But now they too are done and attached.