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I did not properly appreciate until now how small this model is!

Same here (sadly)! I wish I could travel back in time to meet the person who decided it would be a good idea to make yards consist of a fast-growing ground cover that needs to be mowed at least weekly during the hottest part of the year -- brilliant!! I'd shake the man's hand and then slap him around a bit on behalf of all of us tortured homeowners!

So, after completing the SBLim and taking a week off to travel and visit family, the Zero is back on the bench! The aft fuselage is now skinned. A little tricky, as you can see that the forward-most skin tucks underneath the vertical stabilizer, the middle skin rides up the sides of the stabilizer, and the aft skin tapers to a sharp ridge leading down to the tail light. On the underside, the skins must align with the tail wheel well and the tailhook recess. That's all for now!

Welcome aboard, Andrew, and good luck on your project!

A point of clarification about the pricing: Some of the prices on the kits page are shown in Euros, which would seem to make those kits prohibitively expensive. Clicking on an individual kit page reveals that the prices are actually in Turkish lira, which is considerably less expensive!

Welcome aboard!

An unusual and beautiful subject! Well done!

My $0.02 worth: Badger and Supply will both make beautiful models, but they are dated designs. Chris Watton designed them, but his newer designs from Vanguard Models are much improved. I think you will find either of the Caldercraft kits like taking a step backward in terms of kit quality. Fair American also makes a nice model, but Model Shipways kits generally provide you with far fewer pre-cut parts than a Vanguard design. The builder is expected to make many parts using measurements taken directly from the plans. Model Shipways also uses more off-the-shelf fittings than Vanguard. You can't go wrong with Flirt or Speedy. Syren was designed by our very own Chuck Passaro, but the kit is manufactured by Model Shipways, so I think some of the caveats about Model Shipways kits may apply, although Chuck can give you a much better answer on that. Chuck has also written a very detailed practicum for that kit, and we have seen multiple fine finished examples of it here at MSW. Other than that, if you can build a cutter successfully, than you should be ready for a brig. Cheers!

Congratulations, Ross! That is a very handsome model!

I once had a student named Amanda Lewis. She was born considerably later than 1884, obviously. 🙃

Welcome aboard!

Congratulations on a fine result!

Looks like you have arrived at a good result.

Welcome aboard! I hope you enjoy your stay!

Ciao, and welcome aboard!

Be interesting to see if anyone takes him up on the offer to sell the company.

Congratulations on finishing a very attractive model!

Congratulations, Ryland!

After further deliberation with myself, I changed my mind about the wire aerial and added one. I also added the pitot tube, which I had overlooked. And that means it's now time for the BIG REVEAL! You may recall that I forgot to add weight inside the nose. To fix that I simply glued the model to a display base purchased from Hobby Lobby. While thinking about inexpensive ways to add a name plate, I came across the reduced image of the booklet cover that is printed on the back cover of the kit. I thought that would make a nifty little badge of sorts. Enjoy the photos!

Yes, there are doors. I can't remember the part #s off the top of my head, but their shape makes them and their placement pretty obvious.

That looks very nice!

Fantastic work, Tomek!

Okay, I have made an executive decision on the wire aerial. The aerial's approximate termination points are shown in a diagram, but they're not marked on the printed skins, so placing the aerial requires some guesswork. That led me to doing some browsing of photos online, whereupon I discovered that most SBLim-2As did not have wire aerials. Instead, most of them have some kind of stub aerial (not included in the kit) just in front of the mast aerial. The stub aerial probably connects to the cockpit interior via the same port originally used by the wire aerial. Granted, the wire aerials may have been removed sometime during an aircraft's service life, but I have no way of knowing that. In any case, the wire used on the real aircraft was very thin and can barely be seen in photographs. These factors taken together have made me decide to not include the wire aerial And that, of course, means that the model is finished! It's late here now, so I don't have time to do the complete 'big reveal' set of photos. I'll try to add those tomorrow, at which point we will be able to mark this build as finished. Until then, here's one teaser photo of the model sitting on my very untidy workbench. Until tomorrow!

On to the nose wheel. The main thing to be aware of here, as with the main gear, is that there are alternative parts for use with the optional interior wheel well -- just make sure you use the right ones, depending on which version you are building. Here is the nose wheel on its wire strut, along with the various paper parts that go with it. I put part 115 on upside down -- did you notice? I did not add parts 116 and 117 yet because I had a sneaking suspicion that things were going to get awful tight inside the wheel well, and that suspicion was later proven well-founded. I started by gluing the bracket into the well first, then adding the wheel assembly. As you can see here, there is really no room for part 116 between the main strut and the wheel well wall, so I omitted it. Hey, it's a simplified model, so why make things complicated, right? I tested the model upright on its gear, and sure enough -- it sat on its hinter parts thanks to forgetting to add weight inside the nose. There's very little left to do at this point. On the underside of the aft fuselage is a small fin. There is a laser-cut piece for this sandwiched between two skins. I opted to bevel the fin, but this is not required. The last thing to do will be to add two aerials. Stay tuned! EDIT: I should add that the aerials will be the last things on my model only because I'm not going to add the drop tanks. I'm not a big fan of displaying drop tanks or ordnance hanging from the wings of my models -- I simply prefer the look of a clean aircraft. Plus, the drop tank noses are petal structures, and I hate doing petals. Not being Polish myself, I apparently lack the gene for doing them neatly.