Some more progress.
The engine lower cowling with the firewall is attached - some filling and sanding was necessary, especially between its halves. Also the rim of the cowling was treated with a sharp knife to thin down the walls.

The engine tentatively placed to check the fit and the overall impression. That overcowl provided in the kit has a correct dimension and shape, only itsthickness was too large. But some work with sandpaper brought it to an acceptable (for me at least) outlook.


I took some care of missing valve rockers for the engine. A thin wire pieces plus some spare parts left in a PE fret (turnbuckles!!!) put together are to form these bits, which will be partly visible aside the engine upper cowl.


The tail skid support had a nasty pin to embed it in the fuselage bottom and the struts were too thick. Again some surgery to remove the pin and embed it into the massive socket, some sandpaper work on the thick struts, removing the flash, sanding of the fuselage bottom and marking the points for the front struts by some delicate drilling brough this section to a layout acceptable for the scale and ready to paint.


Also the undercarriage was inacceptable in the kit version. The angle between the legs had to be corrected by some delicate bending. The front legs do protrude from side fairings completely neglected in the kit. I added them from pieces of Contrail aerofoil plastic sections. Also these legs themselves had too short section with the aerofoil profile - again Contrail pieces were useful. There is still some sanding and trimming necessary, when the CA glue cures. The rear legs seem to have the correct length and correct layout of aerofoil fragments which do not reach the mounting points in the fuselage.
Additionally, the sockets in the fuselage to accept the u/c legs were too large and on the top of this the rear ones were some 2mm too far to the rear - they should in reality coincide with the rear wing spar nd not be located behind it. I cut the pins from the u/c legs, glued them into the sockets, filled the gaps and sanded everything flush...


