Hey THANKS again Guys!!! Much appreciated!! Brad!!! Great to see you hear, Welcome!!! Can't wait to see some of your impressive work popping up!!
So, brief update. Finished up most of the little greeblies on the cockpit 'walkway' areas. I think I only had to sub 1 or 2 parts of all those suckers! Pretty happy overall with it.
I also got the Classic KoolShade installed over the vent holes. Made my first real 'error' here though, don't mind sharing as it shows things don't always work out. What I did was forgot to compensate for the distance of the cockpit tube that includes the beveled 'connection' between the tube and the cone. That put me too far forward with the vent holes, then when I put the KoolShade over with it's inherent offset from being centered on the holes, I wound up putting the whole section 'too close' to the cockpit cone. I considered for about half a second to rip it out and re build it, but I decided to live with the flaw. Sometimes, for me at least, it's OK not to get as 'perfect' as you were hoping for, so you can just keep moving forward and get a project done. Considering how much of this ship is nuts on accurate, this oversight will just be part of this ship. One other note - I used my "Panther G" strips that should be on the KoolShade for another project, so I wound up using "JagD Panther". Not a perfect match again to the original, but when it's all ya got.....
Next up will be to finish all the little styrene chips on the rest of the hull plating, a few more cockpit details, then on to plating the cone, adding the t-strips, then going for the interior work. Starting to see the construction finish line, but it's still a fair amount of work to do. HUGE KUDO's to Lee Malone, beyond impressed on how fast he put his 5 Footer together!!
The detail parts are all down here
Was cool to put in the Ladder Chief 'emergency hatch' part down
With the KoolShade pushed forward, this detail area wound up 'stretching' a bit
Styrene chips and greeblies going down on the hull section here