Progress has been slow, but I managed to brush paint the interior tonight with Tamiya flat aluminium and deck tan. The paint was very thick and needed a lot of thinner just to drip off the brush, though is at least 5 years old and had been pretty much used up.

I also built the cockpit floor from card stock. I will try painting this with acrylic so I don't have to go through the palaver of using oils to make the plastic look like wood since this will be difficult to see and I fear the oils will only gunk up in the slits anyway:

I also built a control column using plans from Frank's Lebed VII build post. I had a couple of attempts at this as I wasn't happy with my soldering. At first I had trouble getting the solder to stick to the brass rod, even though I used plenty of flux. When it finally did stick, I used too much and it turned into a big glob, which I had to wick off and sand:



While I finally got the control column to something I was OK with, I will not scratch build the foot pedals as:
1) I don't think this will be seen once I close up the cockpit; and
2) It will do my head in.
Once I paint the control column I will mount a wheel I found in the WNW Pup kit (i.e. part B9) on it rather than build one from scratch, which I think looks passable for a 1/48 control wheel,.