Thank you very much Gregory, Frank, Rick, Xan, Ondra, Gaz Giuseppe, Steve, Stephen, Mark and Steve! Your comments are highly appreciated.
When I closed the fuselage I thought about the pilot's head. Only the forward part of the cockpit opening is padded, the rearward part is not. Special Hobby doesn't add anything for the head of the pilot above the seat (nor does the classic 1/48 Eduard kit). I checked all my references, but could not find a picture of the cockpit showing the rear part. Hmmm, the Nieuport 16 and 17 had a headrest, could there really have been just a wooden edge in the Nieuport 11? it would have been a trap for the pilot, working even as a kind of a neck-breaker! I found the answer in the right upper corner of this pic: There
was a head protection in the Nieuport 11 as well, it was covered with wood and equipped with what looks like the small edge of a little cushion for the head. That had to be modelled...
Another item that is ignored or molded wrongly respectively by both aforementioned kit producers is, that the starboard acces pannel at the front of the fuselage was only in very few cases the same like on the port side. the starboard pannel was larger and photos show many variants. I went with what for me seems to be the most common starboard acces pannel. It was made with thin plastic card
Besides of that I reworked the tail aerea with lead foil and brass rod:
The control horns are PE parts that should be glued bluntly onto the rudder and elevator surfaces, which is nonsense in my opinion as they would undoubtedly break when rigging would add just a little tension. So I cut the upper and lower control horn in one piece out of the leftovers of the PE sheet and cut a little gap into the rudder and elevators where I glued the one-piece control horns in.
Thank you!
Borsos
