Show of hands from all who've experienced this. You begin a kit and things are going really well, you're even tackling the problem areas with a minimum of hair pulling. Then as you approach the end of construction things begin to go terribly wrong. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Well that's what happens here. So sit right back and let me recount to the best of my memory on how things went and didn't go.

    I began construction by gluing together the vertical tail and wing halves. Remember to fill in the bomb rack holes. Make holes for the wing antennae and shave off the dive brake stubs if you're not building the C-4. I believe the instructions do not mention this. Next I assembled the engine nacelles consisting of two halves and an insert with a nicely done radiator on
it. The instructions tell you to remove sections of the radiator depending on which version you build ( and I forgot to do this). So far so good. The next step is to assemble the wheel wells/engine housings under the wings. Two halves and a wheel well floor. No detail on the floor, so you may want to add in some ribs and wiring here (although they'll be barely visible once the gear goes in). Make sure you fill the seem between the two halves here, since it is not the natural seem of where the gear doors meet.

The next step presents problem number one. The engine nacelles attach to the wing at a really weird angle. They point up at about a 25 degree angle. I had no reference material, but I can assure you that its wrong. Here is a simple solution for this problem. You don't even need to bother yourself with making a shim from card stock. Simply shave some plastic off of the parts tree, so you get thin curly bits. Glue on the engines to the bottom of the joint and align them so they straight stick forward. Then insert the plastic shavings into the gaping hole on top and soak them with liquid cement. Let dry and then fill in the remainder of the gap (if any - I only had one on the left engine) with super glue. Next come the bulges to the bottoms of the engines and exhaust shrouds. Keep in mind to either work on one engine at a time or to mark them left and right since they look identical.

    While these sub-assemblies were drying I decided to work on the cockpit. Nothing to spectacular here, but it is quite nice. The three seats and two part control column were glued onto the floor and the whole thing was painted a home-brewed approximation of RLM 02 (a mix of duck egg blue and several shades of gray and green) along with the cockpit side walls, radar operators panel, and pilots panel. The various dials on both panels were then painted black and some red. Seat belts were then painted a shade of tan mixed with white and the head-rest, and  gunner's seat (???) were pained a mixture of tan and wood. All this was then washed in dark watercolors and dry-brushed first in white and then aluminum. various buttons were painted red and yellow just to add a bit more color. The completed cockpit components were then stuck into the fuselage half, along with the wing spar and the fuselage was closed. The fit here isn't perfect but nothing we aircraft people aren't used to dealing with. Whip out the old putty and sand paper.   

After the fuselage halves had dried the nose windows were glued in and puttied over since they were not present on the 88c. The horizontal stabilizers went on without a hitch, and the wing/fuselage joint was almost prefect. I decided to glue on the tail wheel gear doors at this point since it is a but joint and I didn't want to botch up my finish later on with glue. The vertical tail needed some coaxing to fit. It would not sit at a proper angle to the fuselage and the front kept pointing slightly to the left. I ended up widening the hole into which it fits and had no more problems ( notice that I also sanded down the thickness of the two halves before gluing them). To finish off the main construction I glued on the nose cone (there were two on my kit. One with guns and one without. I wasn't sure which one to use, but I opted for the gun nose, since the C-6 didn't possess a belly pack or shrage musik like later versions. Finally since I decided to build the night fighter
I glued on the main holding arms for the forward radar array. The joints for these are weak and arbitrary, so make sure you have a good bond and proper alignment before moving on. It was these arms that were the beginning of my problems, but before that lets paint!

    Here is where I wish I had references. The paint guide for the C-6 suggests a light blue underside (RLM 76) with a light gray top with darker gray splotches. Now I've heard of 74/75/76 schemes on night fighters, but it seemed odd to me here since 74 and 75 are both darker than the crosses provided in the decals. OH and the mottle in the instructions is not a mottle but more like random dribbles and spots. It just looked wrong to me, so I decided to go with overall RLM 76 with 74 or 75 ( i forget which it was i used) for a more standard looking mottle on the upper surfaces. Now I suck at mottle schemes as you can see on the photos, but I think this time it turned out pretty much ok.....maybe. I followed this up with a light coat of future and a wash in burnt umber and black watercolors. Your other options are an overall black (too dull) and a standard green splinter daytime scheme for the C-4.

    Now a word about the decals. That word is crap. These were really piss-poor decals. Ok they included swastikas at least, but they were out of register, thick, and too light in color; so much so that they all but disappeared on my model, and they didn't want to stick once applied. A day of drying and setting solution helped these thick monsters finally stay down. They were then burnished into the panel lines and followed with a second coat of future. There are no stencils or "nose art".  A quick aside here, the decals were the main reason I decided to build the night fighter. The C-4 attack version has decals for a false glass nose, but they look so hokey and toy like that I decided to just avoid them altogether ( I can only imagine trying to get them to stay down on the compound curves of the nose UGH! ).