OlCabour's Hangar

The nozzles are primed with black and the interior Alclad Jet Exhaust. Transparent plastic disk, frosted with sandpaper, are glued to their backwards to hide the LEDs and diffuse the light.

The assembly seam of the cabin is sanded after several days of drying. With the dose of glue I applied, I did preferred to leave time to the solvent to evaporate.

The bottom of the remaining problematic verniers were filled with a putty nuts, packed and shaped with a metal rod (here a drill bit for example).

The bottom of the air intake behind the cockpit is grooved to quickly simulate the thrusters petals.

The pilot will be replaced by the one from the mk7 kit, to allow me to switch to Starbuck/Kara in the mk2.

by cons, the original right arm is kept as the joysticks are not located in the same place (between the legs on mk2, and right on mk7) and thus the inclination of the arm varies.

At this scale, I was sad that the pilot's face cannot be see, so I hollowed out the helmet visor and inserted a face from a set of replacement heads from the old MMI upgrade set for Viper mk1 (TOS Monogram/Revell).

The pilot of the Viper mk7 is modified at the same time.

To hollow the verniers, I printed to scale ZOIC blueprints found on the web.

They are then closed from behind with plastic card.

Except some on the nose, where they fall on the air inlet grid (that's the magic of computer graphics : a hole can be filled to its opposite). I will deal them after assembly of the cabin.

Gas caps are hollowed like the verniers.

In the nozzles, the center circle is drilled, which will be good enough for an interesting lighting with the small existing squared openings around.

Plastic discs are trimed to hold the blue LED. For the top nozzle, the hole is directly formed in the part. To ensure proper holding of the LED, I added an additional layer on each disc.

Overall, I found the cockpit is reasonably well detailed. And with some improvements, and a good paintjob, upgrade photoetched will be superfluous.

In fact, it essentially lacks a good set of round dials. I marked the locations and drilled the plastic with different diameters bits and drills on the Dremel .

At that moment, I was not decided to light the model, and I did not perforate completely. My intention was, before paint them, to put a drop of white at the bottom of each dial to highlighted them.

With the lighting, I did break through all dials with the dremel. With a thin bit, I also drilled the tiny buttons, but I drift a little and they are not very straight...

I hollowed the sides to allow the light scattered from the led that will be installed behind the dashboard.

Before installing the LED, I applied the base color of the cockpit : primer and base of light gray Tamiya xf66.

2 wires are added behind the headrest. I thought it was the ejection handles, but it looks like hoses.

I get back on the non-aligned buttons, widened the hole and covered it with a small tab where the buttons were redone. At the same time, I filled an edge damaged during drilling dials.

Then I finish to paint the cockpit. All dials and screens are covered from the back with a thin sheet of clear plastic (frosted with sandpaper to limit the direct light). I first tried to fill a dial with humbrol klear, and this is to avoid as solvents attack the paint. Then tried Microscale krystal klear, but that seemed a little opaque even after curing. So I swithed to frosted clear plastic tab.

I also use a small strip of white plastic card (not painted) will reflector in the center column between the legs of the driver, in order to clarify the three dials.

The dials are then painted with different colors clear paints (Tamiya or Gunze).

The two screens images (Dradis) were captures found on the web, printed on transparent decal paper and protected by a layer of microscale liquid decal film.