Airframe assembly and some special modifications

Just about all the photos show that especially the bottom of the model looks quite peculiar. This is due to the previously primed areas being sanded clean(er). I do think I have mumbled about the Tamiya rattle-can primer flaking earlier, at least, so the flaky places needed to be cleaned up before any serious painting could take place, of course. While doing this I've noticed that priming the pieces in their sprues simply does not fit my method of working, my work-order nor the style.

Hog's airframe

When my cockpit was built and cured, I built the rest of the plane. Everything fit in rather nicely and without insane crevices, which was a huge surprise to me. Oh, I'm sure it'll eat some putty later on, whenever I've got the weirdest parts sanded smooth.

Sealing up the cockpit

My construction had reached the point where I decided it was the time to seal up the cockpit. Before that I did remember to paint some grey on the joysticks, on the bend and to represent the thumb hat-switch. Then I added two red dots for the thumb- and normal triggers. No further details could be seen, if even this much.

Next I cut a thin rectangular piece of transparent plastic for the gun sight and white-glued it in. And with the same wave of arms I glued on the canopy and started wishing that when I start painting no paint would leak through.

Gears: up

My very first idea was to build this kite in the flying mode, with its gears up. Naturally the kit was designed the other way, so I had to cut off a bit off the gear wells and doors to get them sit more or less flush. The front landing gear didn't even fit inside its container (not that you could see it, anyway) so I just glued the doors on.

The main landing gear setup was a completely different story. Had I guessed in advance, I'd crammed the wheel units inside the wheel wells before gluing the wing halves together. But I didn't, so I cut off unnecessary parts so that I could insert the pieces with only a modest application of violence. The three-piece landing gear doors went 2/3 on with ease, but as the wheel's scissor-thingy was in the "down" mode it really didn't cooperate with my plans. The frontmost door part would be partially open and look quite stupid. Of course I could claim that my plane was just taking off or going to land and the doors would be "in cycle", but that would smell like an awful excuse kilometers away. Fixing that last part was left for the next session, as you can see in the photos.

Pylons

There was a staggering amount of pylons to be installed under the Hog's wings. Not that I was necessarily going to install much,  if anything, under my prototype plane, because I do feel that the other models could benefit more from the AtG-arsenal available. We'll see how I feel like when I get to that part of the project.