Hi all!
It has been high time for me to post something... as I have been mostly passive since my joining the forum, (to tell the truth I was engaged in another build: a Male tank diorama, but that's another story...).
Now here I am with a new plane build.
When I first saw this model built by a brazilian fellow modeller I fell in love with it immediately: I never saw such a fancy desing... it had to be mine!
More easy to say than doing, as the kit is rather old (1995, I guess) and way out of production... Fortunately I was well directed to a brazilian ebay-like site where I found it, at last, at an undisclosed and wooping price (never know who ever read this post, and if it happens to be SWMBO, I could find myself to sleep in the doorway!

).
Well, a long story short, here is the start:

On opening the box, I was a little disappointed: the plastic sprue is very poorly modeled and there is a lot of etched parts to deal with

...
Now: being a clumsy modeller I have still not found a way to come to a deal with etched parts... I hate to cut them out of the fret (somehow they always twist in the process), I hate to bend them (they always happen to break), I hate to glue them (to my fingers, mean

)...
Anyway,I am not to give up! And, what the hell, let's also bring the plastic up a bit! Who ever wants an easy life, stay away of modelling!!

So, with this new determination of mine, I decided to rebiuld the fusolage:

I also added something I saw on Des's builds (ehm, don't call it copycat, it's called inspiration!), but it seems to me out way of scale and, francly, are really needed?

Anyway, the fusolage build continues...

Next I focused on the sturts 'problem'. They are etched brass (

) and, above that, bi-dimesional... Trying to find a way to give them more depth, I come out with the sandwich idea

, which is to say, cut them out and glue them to a sheet of styrene, than file it to shape (this is a pic of the first stage of the process, not very clear indeed, but more to follow...)

Well, that's all for now...
ciao
Edo