Let me preface this build by stating that I am terrible when it comes to aircraft that require more than minimal rigging. These projects often last years. I'm simply not good at it so avoid these sorts of kits when it comes time to plunk something on the bench. However, this kit offered me a way out which I will comment on later in the build.

As most of you know, Azur/FRROM kits are tooled by Special Hobby/MPM so are of good quality. They are still short run kits and need to be treated as such. For this build I followed the instructions pretty much to the letter. The cockpit is one where you have to do a lot of prepainting as there is sidewall detail to deal with. In addition a lot of fairly small parts have to be placed throughout building the interior. I found the installation of the floor to be particularly tricky as the control sticks tend to be mounted so far forward that you cannot get them in place once you have installed the instrument panels.

The fuselage halves do not include the bottom which is a separate piece. The bottom section is attached with a 45 degree chamfered edge that makes proper placement somewhat tricky. Building up the separate engine also caused me some issues. You can't really attach the nose halves to the fuselage before as the rear cabane struts are trapped between the engine and fuselage. Besides, the join is pretty much a butt join as the tiny tab is not very helpful. I left off the exhaust until near the end after all had been painted.

Now for the saving grace for me. Potez 25s were often flown as parasol aircraft without the lower wing. Apparently they were interchangeable. One of the options is for such a configuration and that is the one I chose. This means a plug where the lower wing would normally go. Again if choosing the lower wing, you have to attach this prior to attaching the nose as the wings are a single piece.

This did not get me totally out of the woods as the attaching wing struts are very long with no really positive locators. Just some dimples and a small slot or two. Since I did not do a great job attaching the nose, some of these were off a bit and that made attaching the struts a major challenge requiring super glue and accelerator.

With that fairly solid, I attached the appropriate fin/rudder for this version and the horizontal stabilizers. I then built up the landing gear using the required axle and wheels, though did not attach the wheels at this point. Then the tail skid. The small upper wing airfoil pieces were a disaster. I did not realize that the attachment bits were also provided in plastic so used the p.e. bits, which I totally hosed. Same with the aileron hinges.

At this point I had the airframe at a point where I could paint. Now I have to mention that I stopped and started this kit multiple times so the overall time frame of what preceded was about 4 months. I stuffed the cockpits with tissue and headed for the paint shop.