It's been several weeks since I touched this. Partly because of the French GB and partly because I'd reached a stage that needed me to dedicate a few solid hours at it, which is something I can never do during the working week. However, today was the first day of my Christmas holiday and so I went in the shed early this afternoon and have only left it to make cups of tea and for the call of nature...
I was slightly afraid of messing it up at the stage of fitting the interplane struts as there is no kind of positive location for them; only shallow dimples drilled in the wings to show where they go. I do not posess an alignment jig of any description so lining up the struts and top planes was done by the Mk1 human eyeball alone.
It went rather well considering the lack of location holes and the fact that eight of the struts were chopped and modified from the Airfix DH4 kit, and the remaining four were made from plastic strip. The strut ends are extremely small and there is very little strength in them so I had to quickly but carefully get some rigging in place to hold the whole thing together.
The cabane struts and their rigging can be fitted now that everything is stabilised by the rigging that was done today and so that will be the next job.
Other small jobs have been the fitting of the gravity fuel tank and the manufacture and fitting of the carburettors and intakes. For the latter I used plastic rod.
