Thanks again for your comments! I finished the rigging on the Albatros last night, using Bob's Buckles for the eyelets, Gaspatch Turnbuckles, and EZ Line. I haven't had a chance to order the new Gaspatch Albatros style, so I made do with their standard version. That evolution went quite quickly, but I did make a mistake on the stays that run from the nose to the bases of the vee struts in that the turnbuckle should be at the nose. I was gleefully attaching turnbuckles to the struts and forgot about that- they're tightly clustered and I fear an attempt to correct that would result in damage, so I'll live with the error.
A couple of photos show the homemade device that I use to check alignments, just a piece of card paper with one vertical and a series of horizontal lines. It was not easy to steady the camera though, so my vantage point was slightly left of the model and the optics caused some paralax. Everything lined up pretty nicely with little help from me, since I don't have an assembly jig- the credit must go to WNW for their precision in design and production.
Although I was quite pleased with the upper wing and landing gear alignment, the gear legs were very wobbly and the model leaned to starboard by about 3 degrees. I used stiff .012 brass wire for the undercarriage rigging to correct the tilt by making the left wire about .75mm longer than the right and now the gear is solid. A short 60-degree bend into the fuselage to secure that end while the other abutts in a depression on the gear leg. I didn't actually measure the wires, opting intead for the "cut it close then test, trim back, and repeat as necessary" method and got lucky on the first go. I opted to attach everything raw, so willl have to paint all of the rigging bits in situ.
The spandaus are enhanced with the metal parts from Master Model, using the WNW parts for the breech. So, here are the latest pics:
There have been some fiddly moments and I'll have to touch up a few small chips in the paint, but I've really enjoyed this build.
