I had high hopes before I got this, and now  I was reassured that this was going to be a great model. I put off painting right away, so I started working on cleaning up the pieces and I glued the tail fins on (and their braces). I had to check my references for the proper placement of the struts. They have a peg-&-hole system on the wings, but not for the fuselage join. There is a hole you have to carve out of both sides of the fuselage, and then when you assemble the fuselage you trap the arrestor hook in between. I don't know if it was intended to be movable or not, but if care is taken you can assemble it that way. I wanted to assemble it in the deployed position, to show off the fact that, yes, there is a landing hook! Speaking of the two fuselage halves being put together, there is a slot you can cut out from each side to allow a stand to be used (for gear up display or just for fun). However, no stand is included! Pity. I'd have liked one.

I chose to do the gear down because it didn't look like the gear doors would "close" properly, and because I like to display my models on shelves and flat surfaces -- having landing gear helps this along. Once I started painting I got some things assembled. Supposedly I am to use interior green. This is not uncommon, but the early aircraft like this
also had other colors on the inside. I decided to paint the deck, the divider between front and back, the gear bay,  and the cowling all interior green, but I did the fuselage walls in aluminum, as well as the gear doors. I had planned early on to close the canopy. I knew I'd not see too much. However, the contrast between green and aluminum should be visible, adding a hint of eye candy even through a small greenhouse canopy. In truth, one can barely see past the pilot figures. Pilots!  Yes! It comes with pilots! I decided to include them because there is little cockpit detail. I added a stick from my spares (none included) but you can't even see it. I stowed the gun in the proper position, put the pilots in, placed the turtle deck "up" and by the time I got the canopy on the only thing visible was the pilots' faces. Oh well, at least I took the time to paint them nicely.

One thing I should note: This is my first biplane. The lower wings attach to the fuselage. The fuselage has a set of braces, and the outer wings have a set. Now, the top wing is solid. It has to attach to the fuselage braces. Sooo..... What angle do I attach the lower wings at so that I ensure all braces make contact with the inflexible upper wing?
You see, if I angle them too steeply, the fuselage braces won't even contact the top wing. If I do them too flat, the outer wing braces won't contact the top wing. Ugh.. So I taped the whole thing together. I taped the outer struts in place, I taped the top wing to the fuselage struts, which were in turn taped to the fuselage which was in turn taped
together. I then had to glue the lower wings on while matching all the struts to where they had to go. Not an easy task on this model. The task proved much easier on my Gladiator, just because of the way it's set up, I suppose. I also got the proper angle on the outer struts this way. On the SBC they angle outwards steeply.

This was my first biplane and my first attempt at rigging. I had tried to rig WW2 fighters before (a simple piece of thread between the tail and the mast) and that didn't work to well, so I was intimidated with this project. I had no drill, but I took a needle and heated it over a flame, then poked holes in the plastic. Some holes were too large, some
just right. I used CA glue to anchor one end of the thread  and tried to cut it to length then hold in place with tweezers

This didn't work. It was all too slack. I didn't like the result.  I was about to chalk it up to being my first time, but then had a breakthrough.