Building the Cápeti

Off to a head start, I managed to lose one of these... thats where the 0.5mm plastic comes in. Luckily, the shape could be easily copied. 

The interior color (AK RC 980 Russian Cockpit Torquoise) was not an exact match with the pre-painted PE parts, so a bit of bright green and blue had to be added to the mixure. The result... 

...is quite satisfactory, at least I'm happy with it 🙂 

Canopy masking. 

Since it's 1/48, masking the inside is also needed. 

The straps originally are made of two separate parts per leg. Obviously the small PE parts flew over to the Abyss, therefore had to be redone from brass sheet. 

This is the current status. The nose cone will be stripped of paint, then done again. 

Finally glued the halves together. But... 

...despite Eduard's warnings in the booklet, I did left out the weight from the nose cone. Right now, I put several fishing weight in through the hole, and dripped diluted white glue in hopes of success. Now the plane hangs like that 🙂 

Just to show you guys the 3M sanding sponges I use. The trick is to not apply too much pressure, and use all grits, in this order. I have these for 4-5 years, but didn't get the hang of them, until now...
 

FML... it should be the opposite. The rear is duraluminium, the other is dull aluminium. Time to respray... by the way, I'm using Vallejo Metal Color paints, their particle size is significantly smaller than those in Tamiya, Mr Hobby etc paints, therefore more suitable for this scale. 

The gaps will be filled with Vallejo's Plastic Putty. Very easy to clean up with water. 

Hmm, too green... it was remedied later. 

Dryfitting the hump. 

Drybrush (left) vs just grey paint (right) 

This set of clips just arrived, and they work perfectly for holding small parts for painting! 

Rear part. 

A bystander, 3D printed. 

My workspace. 

At this time, it seemed that I'm getting closer. 

Basic colors of the KM-1 ejection seat. I didn't find two examples of the same colors... 😄 

After drybrushing. 

First set of PE belts. 

And the seat completed. Turned out okay. 

Finally the first yellow parts are painted 🙂 

Drat, the finished seat doesnt fit... well, sanding here we go. 

The canopy is fixed with Thin Cement. 

Now I started to see the problems... 

Getting more and more paints, and inconsistent red-yellow mix resulted in a heterogen surface... not the uniform I hoped for... mind you, I only have a 0.2 needle/nozzle, and this is quite a big plane. 

Therefore, I had to strip the paint 🙁 

The good part: after removing the paint, I can more easily correct some filling mistakes I discovered.