Almost there, but then... disaster struck!

My friends, I'm reporting back after another couple of days of hard labor at the workbench! And I'll be honest, this model almost broke me! 

First off, it's the impending doom of my leave for a week-long vacation tomorrow. I'd just love to finish the model before I leave, but I can already see there will be a few parts left to finish. Then it's the ever-present complexity of these modern subjects. When I was buying the kit, my thoughts were: "original, simple, quick". Yeah, we all know how that went, right? :D 

This build also gave me two middle fingers - the first one was from Voyager and their PE set. It's so extensive and detailed, but for some reason, they didn't include photoetched mesh screens for the air intake. Nor are they present in the RFM kit. Luckily, the molding on the hull is quite solid, so I'm pretty confident that some paint wizardry and a black wash will make it look almost like the original! 

The second middle finger happened today - my soldering iron died. The SLAT armor was the most dreaded part of this build, and just as I was getting started and finding some decent workflow, it stopped heating up. I disassembled it, cleaned everything from charred gunk, reassembled it, and it worked! For one whole SLAT bar. Now it just doesn't work anymore. The ON/OFF switch lights up, but the iron doesn't get even moderately warm, it just remains cold. I immediately ordered a new, bigger, better one, and if everything goes well, it'll be here tomorrow morning, but that won't save me or my deadline. 

So for the rest of this day, I'll just tackle the remaining non-SLAT details... there are still quite a few of them! 

You might've noticed that the front mudguards (or whatever they are) are defying the laws of gravity on my model - that's because in the reference photo I'm using as inspiration, they're held up with the wooden pallet camouflage. 

Also, you all know by now how much I hate too many sub-assemblies, and in a dream world, I'd be painting my models completely glued together, including the tracks :D But my main gripe with this SLAT is how complex it appears to be. A part of me wants to superglue it all in place and paint it all together. The only thing that tells me it's a bad idea is the NATO camouflage. If this were a single-tone camouflage, it would be possible without any issues. Or maybe I'll just test-fit it with small drops of superglue, take a video and photos of it, and then use debonder to take it all down for airbrushing. We'll see! 

P.S.: I was so discouraged with the soldering iron that I briefly considered shelving this project, and grabbing one of my shelf queens that are ready for painting. For example, the four-tracked Object 279. But that would be like running a 10km marathon and giving up 100m before the finish line. I'll endure the struggle! 

Also, I'll post another quick update tomorrow before I leave for the airport.