Ok, we’ve got the cockpit floor together. You are following along aren’t you? We are going to do a couple of small assemblies here in Step 3 and then (GASP!) I am going to vary the assembly sequence. Lightning will strike me. I just hope it isn’t until this plane is finished.

As you will see in Step 3, we are dealing with the radio equipment, the RDF loop base, the pilot’s bulkhead and the pilot’s seat and oh no, the dreaded Accurate Miniatures decal seat belt. Since we started this little enterprise a few years back, I can’t tell you how much mail we have received over this innocent little addition to our decal sheets. It is as if we had placed a vial of yellow fever on the decal. "I like your kits but I wish you would take that seat belt decal off the sheet." Over and over. What is it that is so offensive about this poor little thing? Let me explain. We want our kits to appeal to and be appropriate for the "average" modeler. I know, some of our kits have pushed the envelope a little wide of the mark. But as you will see in the upcoming offerings, we are getting it back to "simpler" without sacrificing any detail. We wanted to offer a simple, accurate representation of what went on the seat for this "average" modeler. This might be a person who has never heard of photo etch or doesn’t see any great advantage in replacing the kit part with a piece of resin. And a lot of people don’t look forward to the prospect of grinding off a molded on seat belt so that they can replace it with "their" method. And with photo etch costing what it does (have you priced an aftermarket seat belt set lately?), we didn’t want to jack up the price of our kits anymore. We just want to make a living, not get rich on overpriced kits. So we don’t force molded-on belts and we don’t include photo etch for what we feel are two very good reasons. So do we leave the seat empty? No. Therefore, the decal seat belt. Which, if you’re paying attention, is of the correct type, color and shape. And no one is being forced to use them. If you don’t like our offering, ignore them!

Now that I’ve explained (hopefully for the last time) why we continue to include this item, take a look at the photo and see if they look that bad. All that I have done is cut them out, leaving them on the backing paper, and glued them to the seat back and sides.

A glance at the radio panel will show how that silver colored pencil was used (again) to pick out the surface detail. One of the nice things about the Dash 1 is that the interior is much lighter than the traditional green-interior planes. With all of the glass in the canopies and the ability of opening the various panels, most if not all of it will be visible. If you can see it, we will try to duplicate it.

A final note on that wish to revisit the instruction sheet. If I had it to do over again, I would make it a little easier to reproduce the pilot’s bulkhead. These planes were delivered without any head armor. In fact, most of the SBD’s up to and including some of the Dash 4's and 5's carried a wide variety of non-factory armor configurations. Most were installed in the field and therefore were"nonstandard." I would simply remove the plate as it is molded and not go through the effort to add the template piece. This may be of the absolutely correct shape but it is a little anal. Look at the drawing of part A22 in Step 3. Copy it. Done.

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