The Cannonball Run

[The Wooksta!]

"This caviar's really great, I suppose."

Yet another sodding project!  Still, this has been in this years Plan^TM since late January, so it's just arrived a tad late.

Some months back, I managed to hammer together a Highball Hornet and during the research phase of the process I discovered that there was a proposal for the weapon to be fitted to the Short Sturgeon.  Cue me scrabbling to get a Magna one.  I've been tinkering with it on and off ever since and last week saw the fuselage together and cleaned up. 

The Mosquito Highball fairing is simply too wide for the more slender Sturgeon, so like that employed on the Hornet, I took a slice out of the middle.  It was today that I took a brave pill and started carving out the fuselage to fit the bay.

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Fully assembled fuselage, although I've yet to fit the fin as I didn't want to take the risk of knocking it off during all the carving for the Highball bay.  What looks like a gap isn't - it's black paint.  I've yet to fix the top decking where the target tug observation turret went - I need some P.38 - but the underside cut out was filled with scrap plastic card and my usual superglue baking soda combo.   

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I've guesstimated where the bay went - I've yet to see a drawing of the installation on the Sturgeon - and I've had to carve out a lot of literally solid resin.  Luckily, the Magna stuff is quite soft and fairly easy to work with.

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Recently cast Highball weapon bay dry fitted in place.  Think this is one of the best castings I've managed to get out so far.

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The fairing just dry fitted in place.  There's a lot of backfilling to do, because I'd carved away just a tad too much to get the bay to fit properly.  Plus this wasn't one of the better cast fairings.

There's a lot of filling to do before I even get to the stage of getting the wings on - the engines have been fitted - but looking ahead, I'm thinking of possibly the three tone scheme, but may go with the two tone with the low demarcation as I already have a Sturgeon S.1 with the high demarcation, although it's yet to see any decals.

[NARSES2]