Pic of what's going on next. The vertical fin is added to the lower half of the hull (this is a good fit and only minimal filling will be needed). The doors for the creeper motors (circled) are fixed in the closed position, the creeper motor doors are not a fantastic fit, so a bit of sanding and filling will be needed, but I want the door shut lines to be visible, so not too much will be required despite the less than great fit.
The stern where the screw is to be added is incorrect in profile (circled), the real 971 has a much longer 'tail' extension, presumably to better clear the towed array, so that needs to be extended and reprofiled. Also visible in this pic is the towed array pod and vertical fin, this being the larger one of the type fitted to Akulas prior to the Gepard, since the sail has been restyled to suit the earlier type of Akula. The pod itself also needs a tweek to be correct and show where the antenna wire exits the pod, and some detailing needs adding to the top of the pod, but this is a minimal fix and will be easy to do.
The sail is in fact incorrect for both variants as the kit comes, but is more like the slimmer Gepard type, which was why the sail needed so much work! I think the larger array housing is more visually pleasing however (the smaller Gepard type is also in the kit as an option), so all that faffing around to get the sail to look like an earlier variant was worth it in my opinion, even though making the Gepard would have been easier!
Also visible in this shot is the interior bracing, with putty, which I added to prevent the top half of the hull flexing and cracking the filler used on correcting the way the sail fairs into the deck, with additions at the bow and stern to facilitate reprofiling these areas too. The bow is actually slightly incorrect in shape, although this will in fact be masked by the way I am choosing to display the model, so I can actually ignore that part if I like, but the stern ccertainly is going to get tweeked.
With the sail largely sorted and the hull coming together, things should move along a bit quicker now!
Chock