Made some progress with the build during the week.

Finished the paint job and attached the landing gears. Considering it was the first time that I have used an air-brush, I'm pretty happy with the result (I'm even happy about the primitive dirt effect that I dry brushed on). I learnt a lot during the process which I will apply on my next build.

There is one problem - I wonder if you can spot it in the next two photos....

A big thumbs up to all those that saw that the front landing gear is not touching the ground. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to skip over the instruction that said to add weight to cockpit - see below:

Lesson Learnt = Always follow instructions

This left me in quite a predicament. There was no where that I could add weight to push the front end down. I tried inserting some metal into the cavity where the front landing gear recedes into but this did not do the trick. At this point I was stressing out. I even considered incorporating the plane into a simple diorama so I could glue the front wheel down.

After much deliberation, I remembered that I hadn't included the recon unit that was part of the P-38M model.

I managed to find it in the kit and then pondered how I could substitute this piece for something heavier. After racking my brain, I came up with the idea of using a fishing sinker. I managed to find a appropriately shaped sinker that has sufficient weight to push the front end down.

What I'm going to do is cut off the top part of the plastic piece and super glue it to the metal piece and then attach that to the front of the plane.