More work moving forward toward closing the fuselage halves, hopefully to occur this week. First off I fabricated the new tailwheel strut and retraction actuator. This was done with a bit of aluminum tubing and several pieces of Scale Aircraft Conversions white-metal landing gear parts. Also, take notice that Tamiya included internal structure all throughout the fuselage even to include the tailcone area:
Me 262 V-3
Next was to spray the interior of the cockpit tub and other parts RLM 66, followed by painting the interior of the entire fuselage and underside of the tub in RLM 02. Later 262s had bare aluminum in many of the internal areas but this prototype would surely have followed the early Luftwaffe painting orders:
Me 262 V-3
Me 262 V-3
After the paint had dried sufficiently I began to close up the forward fuselage. First the cartridge ejection chutes were closed up in the two "cheek" panels, then these were attached. The last step here (until the fuselage halves are glued together) was to trim the nose gear doors a tiny bit and CA glue them in place. These fit pretty nicely and will need only a small amount of filler to make them disappear:
Me 262 V-3
Also, I broke down today and ordered an Eduard PE set for the instrument panel and seat harness
, so the progress may slow until this arrives.
