Upon arriving back home in Calgary, after living a very long 11 months in England, I thought I would end my "modeling drought" by attempting something a little daring…. perhaps a little bit more advanced than I am used to. I realized as I set about building this thing, that I have never actually built a Tamiya kit from start to finish. So, breaking with tradition, I followed this through to the end.

First thing, make sure you open all wiring brace and weapons mount holes before anything else. Very easily, I forgot and found myself stuck at several steps throughout construction. Also, make the wiring brace holes as wide as you can, so you can have as much room to play with when you are mounting the wires.

After scouring over the instruction book several times (which I suggest you do… just to be safe), I started on the cockpit. I thought the smallness of it would make construction difficult, but I had it completed in the span of two evening's work. The detail is quite good; it took the paint, wash and dry brushing quite well. I painted the majority of the assembly with the Humbrol equivalent of Tamiya's interior green. A little Micro-Sol was needed to make the instrument panel dials sink down around the detail, but once done, it hugged the raised detail rather nicely.

I worked on the pilot figures while waiting for things to dry. I just followed the directions on painting, also remembering the advice of my fellow club members on wash and dry-brushing. When finished, these guys were probably the best job I had done on any pilot figures. I gave the pilot a moustache for effect, but you can barely see it now.

Now, I must have done something wrong during assembly. I test fitted the fuselage halves with the cockpit inside, and it fit like a glove. But when it all came together, there was a gap of about 4mm on the ventral side just behind the wing root. A little creative filling and sanding was needed, but it worked out in the end. Next came the wings. I opted to build them extended, as nearly every one of these I have seen at model shows have their wings folded. To make a more smooth camouflage pattern, I built the entire upper wing surface first, contrary to their instructions. This proved to be quite a problem when the final wing assembly came to be. I strongly recommend for anyone to follow Tamiya's instructions and… test fit, test fit, test fit! I had one of the wing struts break into about 5 pieces due to a fit problem on the strut base. This detour I took also made it a bit hard to apply the wires. After a whole lot of backtracking, reconstruction, and swearing (thank God no one was home at the time), I got things together and got them looking rather nice, considering I have never worked with photo-etch before. Sure some of the wires had sag on them, but at least I didn't bend the crap out of them.

Next came the float assembly. Personally, I thought the struts were a little bit weak, but these things went together as easy as pie. I needed a tiny drop of putty to cover up a small mold depression, but other than that, no problems. Very little effort with excellent looking results.

Final construction was quite easy, and only had a few small fit problems. The decals went on with ease. I accidentally touched one of the roundels while it was still wet, so it has some wrinkles in it that will not come out. As one of the guys in the club said, "It was probably painted on by some ground crew guys at 4:55 pm on a Friday afternoon." I added some paint chipping around the grey-green camo scheme; I also added some mooring lines on the front of the floats for a bit more realism.

I thought that this kit would be tough. I now disagree wholeheartedly. I found this one to be very easy and actually quite fun to do. This kit was an absolute joy to build. Perhaps it was because it had been a while since I had done anything on the bench, or that I had forgotten how fun building these things can be. I would suggest this kit to anyone of any skill. It is kits like these that make this hobby worthwhile.