Thought it about time I showed some progress on the AEC. Interior painted now. Not much can be seen through the hatches, so I did not go to great lengths on stuff that is just a shape at the back of the area of vision:
I am so glad that it is at this stage. I have broken so many pieces during construction and painting. Such brittle parts. There is a fine line between scale thickness and enough strength to hold together, and Miniart stepped over the line on this one.
Even the etch parts are sometimes unusable and some of the etch is just not practical - example the light guards. So thin that if you just breath on them and they deform, hence the styrene replacements in the pic…