Thank you Early Bird and Rick!
Engine and MG's have now been painted and installed within engine bay. Added some ammunition feed chutes to gun breeches and glad to report the guns fitted perfectly and aligned correctly with the engine.
Also added the small oil tank (made from 2.5 mm plastic rod cut and sanded to shape) on starboard side of engine sadly only just visible in this photo.
I was then able to install the cabane struts. The standard kit has the location of these in completely wrong place. I therefore repositioned to where they should go. However, the kit cabanes are not quite wide enough to go where they needed to. Rather than make complete new struts I simply cut away the inner, angle strut. This allowed me to stretch out to correct location.
To replace this strut part, I filed down 'flat' some fine plastic rod and glued these in place
These struts were then aligned against the location holes on the underside of the top wing to ensure a good fit of the upper wing. I was worried that if I re-arranged the cabanes this would throw the geometry of the top wing and location of the interplane struts. I need not have worried as test fitting proved this not to be the case - phew!
The next stages will be to paint and decal fuselage; rig elevators and undercarriage the work on prop and spinner. More to follow in due course.
Regards
Dave
