It is on order, and has been shipped.  tap. tap. tap.

And waiting for me today there it was....

Everything looked ok, except that the coupler was a bit pushed into the body tube, and rather stuck.  It took about 20 minuets of gentle coaxing to seperate them

Here is another look at all the parts, with the packages opened.

Double Doppler blooper batman! - I had 2 "Doppler" decals, and no "Shift" decal.
As it turns out I have planned to use decals of my own design, so I didn't mind.

Now.. off to read the instruction book...

No suprises so far:

• Hardpoint anchor built, and installed on one end of the MMT
• Centering ring glued on
• Fin can slides up the mmt, then glued the Slimline.
• Letting all this cure.

• I used DAP Plastic Wood to fill in the groves on the body tubes.  Normally I dont bother, but I wanted this rocket's paint job to be extra nice.

• Next up was the AV bay... seems kinda big.

Trying to get the fincan/MM Tube to slide into the pre-sloted body tube took a lot of effort.  Thankfully I was warned of this by my brother, and I was prepared.

First, as the instructions suggested I took off the 1/32" joint line that is at the middle of the fin can

Second, I sanded down the entire fincan (no, not the fins them selves), with 100 grit.

Saddly that was not enough, because when I dry fitted the assembly into the body tube, it still got stuck about 1/2" from where it needed to be.  So out came the heavy artillary.   I wraped 120 grit sand paper to a nylon ... something on a stick.  I dont know that it really is, I always used it to cleah out RMS tubes. (see pic) .  With this tool, I sanded the INSIDE of the body tube where the fincan was going.

  This did help but I was still 1/4" short of the goal.

My next trick was to use my dremal and sand down/bevel the first 1/4" of the fincan.  Finally, it fit.

Now it sits curing.  Don't tighten the zip-tie too much, just make it snug, or else you will bow out the tube, the Fin-ders will not sit flat, and you will have that much more gap to fill.

 While I waited I finished a few more steps on the AV-bay and top section.  Specificly sanding the avbay so that it slipped in and out with out grabbing, and then marking, drilling, and reinforceing the rivit holes.

The Fin-ders slip over each fin, and epoxyed.  Try your best to get the fin-der's to align with each other... unfortuantly, one of mine is set back further than the other two.  

Once everything was dry, I took alook at the gaps... yes, there WILL be gaps, it is designed that way.

This is going to take a bit to fill in, time to get out the DAP and get started.

Prime, sand, repeat.

Saddly due to the weather, these steps will take a while.  While I was waiting for the primer to dry, I finished up the Avbay, not that there was that much to do.  And I did some work on the decal that I will use, not sure yet if it will go on the flat of the Fin-Der or on the body tube.

Nose cone :Primed with Krylon "Fusion for plastic" White primer, then 2 coats of Krylon Banner Red Gloss

Everything else was primed with OSH Enamal White primer.

Payload tube : Krylon yellow
Avbay stripe : Black
Sustainer body and FIN-DER's : Krylon White Gloss
Forward 1/2 of fins : Deep blue
Aft 1/2 of fins: Purple

Decals: (inkjet printed onto decal paper, then sealed with 2 coats of  Rust-oleum Painter's Touch Crystal Clear Gloss)
the file named "Orange" on the previous post, was printed on a clear decal sheet, and wraped around the forward edge of the payload section. (red decal over yellow paint...)
I am still adjusting the "spectrum" image to fit properly on the "flats" of the FIN-DERs.