Super Jerry construction

With the pilot neatly tucked away in the cockpit, it was time to hide him away in the hull forever.

I glued in the side window and covered them with a couple of layers of Winsor&Newton liquid latex... it's colorless (not very handy) zo I added a couple of extra layers to be sure I got all the whole thing. Left the main canape of for now. Filled up the cockpit with packaging foam and cover that with masking tape.

The hull when together well enough.

Then I grinded off the axle-flange-things to glue in an extra part. In the instructions this is the 'pro' assembly option (the novice option being to glue in the torpedo shaped part in which the bolt go onto which the legs can be screwed later)...
Regrettably I didn't take any pictures of this stage of the build.

I assembled the rest of the hull. Apart from the usual filling and sanding of seams and gaps I replaced all the handles other thin bits with copper wire. Also added weld seems with green stuff.... Some of them are quite crude I will admit, not exactly to scale, I guess. Still learning there.

I filled in the spotlight armature on the front with green stuff as well as I thought it'd be more logical to that thing be a solid part... not hollow. I will sand off the top of the light before glueing it onto it (after paint).

Than it came time to start assembly on the legs... and I ran into a little bit of a problem.

The hull required two of the 8 supplied PE Sleeves. Then the legs required another two each... but when I wanted to attached the hydraulics to the legs I noticed I came up 2 sleeves short. 

Assuming this was a mistake in putting together the kit (maybe they just made a mistake counting the ones they put in the box), I wrote Wave an email. They promptly replied with an answer. 

Apparently mine is part of an older release of the kit, containing an old set of instructions. A corrected version is added to newer releases (probably the one coming in March).

Anyway, the solution is to cut the remaining 2 sleeves in two and use the halves for attaching the hydraulics to the legs....

BUILDER'S TIP:

When you're reading this and you're building this thing please note the following. These sleeves have been known to react to paints or thinners thereof (even the odorless turpenoids), by swelling up. This has in some cases been bad enough to split the legs (and when this happens it will happen after painting).

The solution to this is to cut a thin strip out, down the of length of the sleeve, giving it room to expand  into.