Thanks again for the encouragement everyone - it's greatly appreciated. I'm still waiting for this kit to show its teeth - assuming it has any, I suppose they will appear when I am attaching the wings to the fuselage and trying to align them. That's a job I'm hoping to do in the next few days - watch this space!
Here are a couple more photos of the cockpit before installation in the fuselage. Details of what's from the kit and what I changed are as follows:
- the seat frame, cockpit floor and rudder pedals are kit stock - a bit chunky but otherwise accurate. I had to fill a couple of nasty ejection pin holes on the floor ahead of the foot skids, for which I used my usual filler of superglue.
- The aileron control horn on the floor just behind the rudder pedals (with the still-loose Ez Line attached to it) is from Copper State Models' dedicated photo-etched set for the 1/28 Revell Dr.1. This is a useful aftermarket set, even if I won't up using most of it.
- The rudder control lines running from the pedals to beneath the seat are made from EZ Line held in place by 1mm x .05mm tubing from Bob's Buckles.
- The bent tubing/framework running vertically up from the rudder pedal bar is a leftover part from my WNW 1/32 Fe.2b that I adapted to approximately the right shape.
- The spent ammo bin which I've impaled on this tube (not technically correct, in reality the tube does not go through the bins but I needed a method to securely mount the bins in the cockpit) is from the 1/32 Roden/Encore Dr.1 kit. (I don't need them for my Roden build because I'm using photo-etched replacements from Part which are much better.) The data tables on the bin have been lifted from the Encore photo-etched set - I'll worry about replacements when I build the Roden kit....
- The control column has been heavily modified from the kit original with spare bits of photo-etch, lead wire etc, using original Dr.1 columns and technical drawings as a guide. The photos of the control column from Richthofen's machine on the Australian War Memorial website were particularly useful. I wish I had taken better photos of the finished column, as I'm really pleased with the result.
- The compass is a combination of the (surprisingly good) equivalent part from the Hobbycraft 1/32 Dr.1, attached to the bottom half of the Revell compass and with the compass face added from the Encore set.
- The seat belts are from Tom's Modelworks' generic WW1 German aircraft interior set. There are some buckles that I've left off because I wasn't convinced I could add them without smearing glue everywhere, but I think they look ok as they are.
- As previously mentioned, the screen behind the seat is made from scrap plastic, with elastic thread used for the stitching and the usual combo of EZ Line and Bob's Buckles loops and tubing for the cross-bracing.
That's about it for now. Next step is to install all of this in the fuselage halves.
cheers Brad