Hi,
something like near the end now but more accumulation of errors and wrong moves.
I 'distressed' the upper wing surface and tailplane's clean bleached linen with some MIG Rainmarks - but if you try this make sure you have a good acrylic or polyurethane varnish coat. I hadn't done this and when I went to pick up one the upper wings to start preparing it for rigging/attachment to the fuselage it was stuck on the worktop (actually on the kitchen grease-proof paper I use as a barrier)! I hadn't noticed that excess had run off the leading edge and 'melted' the paint (Gunze Mr Hobby acrylic). Another massive DOH!!!! So I had to touch up the underside blue on the leading edge and restore some the rib tapes. Jees.
Before doing any more work I sprayed the fuselage with a near-matt coat (about 3:1 matt/gloss Vallejo Premium) and had attached the exhaust; then removed the window masking.
I had fitted the 0.1 mm 'wire stretchers' to all the attachment points but with shorter ones at the upper and lower wing roots and none at the aileron-control teardrop on the lower wings - here the medium-sized UvR line was inserted after I had drilled out the holes a little more. I'm not quite happy yet about these stretchers/turnbuckles as, although they are getting near-to-scale, they are too flexible. This is OK for nudging them into the right angle but they bend easily. It was easiest to attach the (largest thickness) UvR line to the upper wing root and upper main strut points (3 wires - one is a drag-wire) first. Another problem is that the line does not always sit in line with the stretcher - depending on how the line was held when superglue was applied. I can see the value of slipping some sort of sleeve over this to tidy up things like this. Something for me to practice on somewhere else - not on model like this. Not trying to tie/wrap them seems to do it but leaves only a tiny point of contact of the line and loop.
Then the upper wings were attached to the fuselage - a tight but excellent fit and the main struts just popped in nicely without any problem (fixed to lower wings first and allowed to set) - excellent WNW stuff as usual.
I've just photographed the model after the main rigging was done but not the aileron control cables - not that you can see much in these shots.
Got to finish the wing rigging now and add remaining bits to fuselage, then try and get the spindly u/c to fit without any wobbly airframe above it. A good candidate for brass replacements here methinks.
Not going to put this anywhere near a competition table as some of the paintwork is too messy but it looks quite smart now.
Cheers,
GrahamB
