Blue Angels AT-6 Texan build

A quick job to close the back wall... 

The cockpit with modifications : front firewall, rudder bar, eduard seatbelts,... 

A lot of wiring added. The roll-over protection was thinned out later. 

Some of the added bits are not very visible, and just meant to busy the cockpit, based on the documentation I found. 

The rear instruments panel, which is the original (and still quite good) Monogram part.
The rear seat is turned forward and the semi-circular gun ramp was kept, but no gun installed on this display-team bird. 

Many wires added... It's quite convenient given how the cockpit structure is conceived. 

The front panel, and on the rear rudder, the rivet detail that is already a bit sanded down. 

The very visible front (oil cooler?) scoop needs thinning out. The bottom intake was also thinned out after joining the fuselage. 

The overall fit is good, in typical Monogram fashion. 

The exhaust collector, ready for the engine (which came much later).
I'm still not sure whether my particular airplane should have had the cowling with the gun (except removed), or this plain cowling.
A number of options are undocumented on this kit : extended (Harvard) exhaust pipe, different canopy framing (the open and closed versions are not the same), these two cowlings.. 

Some detail added to the landing gear wells.
Overall, this Monogram kit is quite detailed ans accurate, but in some areas, like the wheel scoops, the fit needs adjustment. 

Wheel well details and cutout across the bottom air intake. Overall rivet detail needs to be toned down, but I can't be bothered sanding it down completely and re-doing it...
Doing the yellow paint over the 'natural metal' finish of this version of the kit was a many-coat affair, as I found out... I should have started with grey primer! 

I bought a Cooper Design P&W R1340 resin engine for this kit, only to find out that it was molded after the original Monogram part and hardly better ! So I ended up using the original part and adding pushrods and ignition wires. 

As I found out well into the build, there were at least two different SNJ Beetle Bombs : this SNJ-5 (rear canopy is framed, front cowling has a gun bump, but no gun), which was photographed at Pensacola airbase in August 1949. It does not seem to have the 0 on the tail yet. Maybe it did not play the Zero part yet ? The cockpit framing seems shinier and was probably bare metal. 

And this better-known SNJ-6 with Inomarus.