Adding planes to my ground projects

Hi guys  

I bought a thing, most people in hobby circles know me as a builder/collector of WWII ground vehicles and figures, and I haven’t built a plane in 35-40 years, but I have been playing with the idea of adding a couple of planes, 1 fighter and 1 ground attack aircraft to each of my projects, unfortunately this side of the hobby is a whole new knowledge and skill set, so I am on a steep learning curve.

I took a stock take of most of my aircraft kits, half bought over the last few years, the other half bought recently, they have mostly been impulse buys with my ground projects in the back of my mind, but without much research, I’ll undoubtedly pay for this later with planes that don’t quite match their ground units in time periods or AOs, so I’m going to have to be flexible in my accuracy expectations. I need to add more British and US aircraft, but I want to research them a bit more to get the right ones, I only want Brit planes for 1940, North Africa and the far east, and US planes for Normandy and the far east, I’m going to find it tough to gain the knowledge, then source the required decals and paint jobs for specific units, so I’ve decided to stick with the paint jobs/decals supplied in the kits, I’m also going to try and reduce the work load by painting the canopies rather than keeping them clear, which I’m sure in aviation modelling is  taboo but quite common in wargaming.

I’ve started building the first few kits, a mix of French and German, even though they have half the parts as a 1/72 AFV kit, they are taking me longer to put together, and they are a lot more fragile, I’m finding I’m breaking a lot of small parts with my clumsy fingers, I’m wondering if I should replace antennas and such with wire, some of the kits are only designed to be built with wheels down, I’m making all of mine in flight and stowing the wheels can take work, so far I’m less than pleased with my results, but I’ll press on and take pics once the construction is done.