I've got the main fuselage frame together now, and I have to admit I'm glad that bit is done! It may not look it, but 90% of the work here was just in those PE rigging points. They're a nice update to make though, firstly because the kit parts look quite bulky and inaccurate, but also because they miss out 2/3 of the rigging wires. Quite deliberately I suspect, but it's still going to be a noticable omission.
Instead, I tried to copy the attachments the real aircraft has. And this required three PE parts and three pins to be shaped and joined together at each point (and there's 26 points) so it was very tedious...
That part done, I then had a quite a struggle to get the frame together, as it wasn't initially strong enough to cope with the bend put into it. Eventually, after using far more glue than I'd have liked, it came together with the joins looking a bit too messy, but much less noticeable once I'd cleaned things up a bit.
So now I've got a long list of parts to make for the fuselage, and it's proving to be much less repetitive, and a lot more fun
I've used some more of the PE sheet to make the throttle quadrant, and started on a new instrument panel. This is another part I'd recommend replacing in the kit, less because of the shape issues, more because the kit part is just far too low (about 4mm which even in 1/16 is a lot).
I've been having quite a few problems with photobucket here btw, so not sure if all the photos will load...
