Thank you everyone, this is coming together slowly but like the WWI models, in stages. Good point mc65 about the pedal holes, I may do just that - I'll have a look at how the assembly looks to see if I will do that.
I bought a PE set for the external detailing, I found this too late to buy the cockpit detail set but never mind. I don't always get on well with PE, but this set has a lot of additional panels and bits for the undercarriage bays etc that is not in the kit. With the WNW Tripe, the PE I bought was mostly expected to replace kit detailing - which in my opinion was unnecessary so a bit of a waste of money. For this kit, I will use much of the PE as I will leave the bays open.
Latest update is the gun bay. As this version was a fighter/bomber there are 2 guns, not 4. I tried to use the PE wiring for the gun control but bending the flat PE into the 3d complex curves beat me. I had a second go with some painted invisible thread for the wires, but then as the lengths were short, the wires were not flexible enough. So my 3rd attempt was WNW's rigging elastic, stretched thin then painted yellow and black. This did flex enough - not as tidy as aircraft wiring should be, and only a representation of some of the wires.
I will leave the gun bay panels open, which is why I wanted to show the wires. Also, if the panels have any kind of fit issues when closed, leaving them open avoids any gaps or steps that need work to tidy up the fuselage surface. The fuselage halves come together OK, when pressed together the joins are quite close, and will need little if no filling. In fact it looks like one of the joins is actually where a panel join would go, so that is a bonus.
I decided to overpaint the aluminium with RLM 02 representation, as some aircraft may have had that coating, plus I think it makes a nice contrast and brings out the detail. There are some metal highlights that are difficult to see in the pics, and I added further tones with a coat of brown-ish darkened Klear. In the bay ahead of the gun bay, you can see that effect, which was my first experiment (that bay will be covered) and which I thought was overdone, so I used less colouring in the gun bay itself. I will do the same painting and coating in the undercarriage bays.
