The next few steps were assembling the wings and fuselage together and the fit was really good.  A little filler was needed on the underside were the main wings and fuselage come together and a little filler for the lower intake halves, again nothing major.  Don’t forget to add a little weight in the nose to let the model properly sit on it’s nose gear.

Next was the canopy and little details such as the pitot tubes and the upper nose cover.  The canopy fit was good in the closed position and didn’t require any special attention.  The upper nose cover can be position open to display the avionics or glued closed.  A little bit of sanding was required to smooth out the fit of the cover in the closed position.

I decided to make the South African AF trainer version in the natural metal finish.  I used Tamiya’s rattle can paint silver leaf (TS-30) and gloss aluminum (TS-17) to paint the model.  I sprayed the rattle can paint into my airbrush tinlet and then sprayed the model.  This technique helps control the overspray and eliminates the common ‘running’ of the paint when sprayed directly out of the can.  I sprayed the gloss aluminum color as the base coat and then I masked of some of the panels and paint silver leaf for a contrast.  One nice thing about the Tamiya silver colors is that you can mask off panels and not have to worry about peeling away the paint so common with just about any other silver colors.

After letting the paint dry overnight, I assembled the landing gear and speed brake.  The gear was simple and easy to install.  I then applied the decals from the S.A.A.F.  The decals went on without problems and settled down easily with a little Micro Sol.  I didn’t weather the model that much since the few pictures I found of an S.A.A.F. MB 326 trainer appeared to be pretty well maintained and shinny.