RAGIII
I got the hardest part over with, this afternoon I set blade to model after what to my dim recollection is 13 years. Again, I want to thank everyone who encouraged me to get on with it. And as for rigging, stretched sprue and a blob of glue was high tech back in the day. Sprue's ability to pop taught in the proximity of a hot wire has always fascinated me in spite of it's equally (in)famous tendency to burn in two if that proximity gets too close. You should have seen my 1:72 I'lya Mourmets, by the time I got done, I think I rigged one and a half of them.
I started simple with the PS.7. Looking at the underside of the top wing, I can see that I didn't take much care of it after the accident past snatching the still attached struts of of it. Each one left a nice little blob of CA/strut material/paint standing proud at each strut location. What I need is a nice little hole at each location, so I twiddled at each one with the point of a new #11 blade. This tended to pop the offending blob out in most cases. It also took a little paint with it, but not more than a little touch up will fix. Hey, it's the underside and not going to be looked at too often. It seems I had already cleaned up the holes on the top side of the lower wing before consigning the model to limbo in it's box. The first photo shows two holes cleared and the next two as they broke.
I decided not to mess with the loose tape issue on the bottom wing. It's there, but not nearly so pronounced as on the underside of the top wing. Any surgical scars would be very hard to hide there. The underside of the top wing is critical though as the skin needs to be bonded to the core or it will play hob with strut lengths and alignment, something to be avoided at all costs in a 3 bay wing cellule. The second photo hopefully shows the underside of a lower wing panel.
So I've made a start and fixed the strut holes that were clogged with glue, all with less damage than I'm known to be capable of. Next step is to cut chordwise slits in the wing skins between each pair of mainplanes on the underside of the top wing. I can use the way the skins have "inflated" and the slits to apply some thin CA and press the skins to the core as it cures one bay at a time.
sp