672nd Fighter Wing, Red Dragon Squadron Imperial Navy - “The Red Baroness” (SPRING CLEAN CHALLENGE 2021 by Zebraoutrider)
Thunderbolt - Construction
I needed to prep the Thunderbolt in a similar fashion to the Lightning with washing, drying, removal of tabs and excess flash and washing again and drying ready for construction.
I mentioned before that the instructions were pretty rudimentary and certainly I had to use my instinct on how the pieces actually went together. With such poor instructions, I tested each piece in its location before gluing – this time with Loctite Super Glue Gel 3G. I actually used two lots of glue and at £3 each the only advantage over the Citadel gel tubes was the control mechanism and so it was a tad disappointing to go through more glue than I had foreseen.
There are also a couple of bits that I simply can’t tell where they should go from the instructions so I will have to Google some images of built Thunderbolts to see if I can spot their location.
Thunderbolt fully constructed bar a couple of odd bits. Note that the cockpit is glued in place, but the canopy is not yet as I need to create a unique pilot and cut the clear plastic for the glass panels. The pilot’s seat has also not been inserted yet as I will need to build the pilot into the seat before gluing it into the cockpit. 
Here is a size comparison of the Thunderbolt against the Lightning. You can see how the Thunderbolt gets labelled as a heavy fighter. As with the Lightning I will need to use some liquid green stuff to smooth into some gaps in the joins.Next up I need to use liquid green stuff on a few gaps on the Thunderbolt fuselage and roll out some green stuff putty as I kit bash a pilot to represent ‘The Red Baroness’.
Time taken:
Preparation if components: 3 hours
Construction: 3 hours
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