I have recently returned to an old love of mine - plastic model building - and after a couple attempts at some old kits I had lying around, this was my first real foray back into serious model construction. I've been very impressed with the Trumpeter brand so far, but I did encounter one strange problem: the space on the hull for the port side bow gun platform did not match up correctly with the platform - I had to use a Dremel tool to cut away enough of the plastic to make it work, a regular hobby/x-acto knife wouldn't do it, it was a significant amount (not flash, it almost seemed like a factory mistake). Once I got past that snafu, I had a great time putting the rest of it together. I found that I have a lot more patience for this hobby now than I did when I was 10, and this was a fairly complex kit with a lot of parts so my biggest recommendation is to be patient and take your time. The instructions were a little fuzzy in places, I found that it helped to thoroughly test out placement of the parts BEFORE attempting any glue - once again, some minor imperfections here, these could be fixed with a little chop from the hobby knife. Assembling the planes was probably the most difficult part, those small canopies and wings can break easily when you cut them off the trees. I found that setting up an assembly line was the way to go: I separated all the plane parts and tackled them one at a time. I should also note that I added a few extra sets of planes to this model (I wanted at least a dozen of each type). That took almost as much time as building the rest of the ship, but I've always been a little nuts about carrier models - I've got the 1/350 USS Hornet to do with a complete set of 16 B-24s for the Doolittle Raid. My next trick is to try to make my own bombs/torpedoes using a clay cast - my wife is a potter so that gets her involved a bit too!