The fuselage is together on the AMX, and now it has wings and a vertical stabilizer.
The fuselage fit was good, not great though. While there were no gaps in the join, the seams took a bit to get rid of. I’m still going to need to give it a final primer coat to make sure they’re all obliterated. Nothing difficult to deal with, just needing some attention.
I went ahead and painted and masked the air intake lips silver, so that I wouldn’t have to try and mask those once they were mounted on the model. If you clean everything up nicely, it’s an almost perfect fit. I will need to sand down a slight prominence along the top edge, but overall very top notch fit.
The wings had me a bit worried. Except for a small tab, it’s a butt join, and I was worried about getting the wing anhedral set correctly. However, if you make sure to clean up the edges of any bumps, the fit is near perfect and the angle pretty much sets itself. A dab of Mr. Surfacer in a few places will minimize some tiny seams, but that is all it will need. The vertical stabilizer fit equally well.
At this point, I think I will paint the airframe without the horizontal stabilizers. As the entire tailplane unit moved, it won’t need to be faired in. And there are some fairly prominent weathering effects to be applied in that area, and not having to deal with tailplanes will make it much easier. So that’s the plan…. at least for now!
I have to say, getting it to this point is really making me smile. Seeing the Ghibli take shape is really exciting.
And maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the AMX have very similar lines to Grumman’s F11F Tiger? I’ve always liked the lines of the Tiger. Perhaps that’s why I find the AMX so appealing?
There’s still a few more bits to add, canopy needs to go on, and a few other details, but the next major step is the really fun part- painting! The kit comes with two nice marking options. One features an all black vertical stabilizer with a very prominent marking on it, while the other option is an all gray airframe- but I have quite a number of reference photos for it. So I’m not sure which I want to do. Decisions, decisions…
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