Normally, I'd use white glue to stick the canopy (cement would cloud clear pieces). I've been told though that it's safe to use cement because the clear pieces are protected by the Future. It's always awkward to use white glue so I decided to bite the bullet and use cement instead.

An inspection after the cement has dried seem to bear the theory out. It looks fine. Anyhow, primer time!

Hasegawa provides decals for the shoulders but these are real tiny and disintergrated when I tried to lift them off their backing. BAH! In the end, I just gave the shoulders abit of dark wash. I also poitioned the head so that Isamu is looking to the right. Other than these, this was a straightforward handbrushing job.

This figure is tiny. I suspect it's not actually 1/72 scale. Even if it is, compared to the typical pilot figures, it's very thin in comparison.

First though, I need to do some pre-painting. Specifically the inside of the thrusters. Some sink marks were fixed and I handbrushed Gunship Grey on these.

Here's why we should test fit before cementing. The thruster base is too wide which in turn causes a huge gap when you close the two sides of the engine housing. So out comes the trusty hobby knife to cut away excess plastic (indicated in red below). After that it's a matter of another test fitting to make sure I did not overdo it.

Now it's time to do the inflight modifications. Gear down tends to be easier for Hasegawa kits. Gear up will require some planning. There are 3 parts to the front landing gear. First I joined the 2 side doors with plastic card. Then I added some plastic card on the inside of the gear bay. This will stop the gear doors from falling into the bay. Then it's just a matter of sanding down the forward gear door to fit into the bay. I overdid it a bit with the sanding but that's easily fixable later.

For the rear landing gear, I decided to use blutack as a stopper. Careful sanding was also required on the part of the doors so they will fit properly. With the blutack in place, there is no chance of the doors falling into the bays.

While nicely engineered, there are still quite a few sink marks on some of the exposed sections of the kit. The most obvious being the rear fuselage. Only a matter of putty and sanding. Still, could be better engineered.

So first up, as typical of aircraft kits in general, I begin with the cockpit. The seat is done up first. Handpainted with Vallejo paint, given a black-grey wash, then drybrushed with white. It looks like there's a pee stain on it :P. I'll fix it soon enough.

Next up, the cockpit tub and control panels. Since it's strictly OOB, it's all a matter of handpainting Vallejo, black-grey wash and a final drybrush of white.

I'm supposed to use decals for the control surfaces. Unfortunately, they disintegrated as soon as they got into the water. So I ended up painting the main consoles blue over a base of white with a wash of black-grey. The rationale is of course, these are all digital displays so they are basically TV monitors.

I chose to do the YF-19 in single-seater mode so the second seat section is covered by a panel. The details are a bit bare but I think with the canopy on, it should look fine. I'll add seatbelts to the seat after WOOB 04 is over, just because I think the seat really needs them. I also find the grey I used for the cockpit to be abit too bright, but I'll see how it goes when the canopy goes on.

The engineering of this kit is better than the VF-1 series as the kit is made up of entire subassemblies which should make painting and easy affair.